The problem discussed in the present paper is workplace bullying in the nursing field. In this day and age employers and policymakers are starting to consider the wellbeing of the workforce as one of the major contributing factors to performance efficiency. It is unfortunate that bullying in health care is still present, and health practitioners’ mental health, motivation, and ability to uphold precision and self-composure are compromised. There is not an easy solution to this complex issue, nor will it be fully resolved. However, what would aid the situation greatly is meticulous intersectional analysis in which causes and consequences, contributing factors, and obstacles are taken into account (Else-Quest & Hyde, 2016).
The present paper employs several perspectives of inquiry: scientific, mathematical, cultural, and ethical. The scientific and mathematical perspectives reveal the gravity of the issue, as the link between bullying and mental health issues becomes apparent and the economic costs of the toxic work environment are shown. The cultural perspective seeks to explain which cultures are more permeated by the issue, and how race and ethnicity might introduce a particular dynamic to workplace relations. Lastly, from the ethical perspective, potential inhibitions to moral code enactment are discussed.
One of the strongest insides on the issue was provided by a paper by Wright and Khatri (2015) on the psychological effects of bullying. What captured attention about their study’s findings is that bullying behaviors do not only do harm to the victims, but they also have an adverse impact on the perpetrators. Thus, it is implied that when addressing the issue, it is imperative to reach out to both groups: the bullies and the bullied. Another study worth mentioning is a comparative review by Duffield, Roche, Homer, Buchan, and Dimitrelis (2014). Its projections about future nurse shortages in the workforce only affirmed the rationale for the present research since the toxic work environment might be one of the main reasons for turnover and retirement.
One should note that all the employed perspectives were instrumental in examining the issues. However, in the process, it became evident that some of them were more revealing than others. For instance, the psychological effects of bullying have been of great interest to researchers in many fields for years. One may say that the topic is now extensively investigated, and the findings of the studies conducted in the nursing field specifically are aligned with those in other occupations (Edward, Ousey, Warelaw & Lui, 2014).
Thus, the theoretical framework of workplace bullying applies to the nursing profession, safe for some minor details. A more revealing perspective, however, was the mathematical one. It allows observing the consequences of workplace bullying on a larger scale. For instance, the statistics about turnover rates caused by bullying pertain to the search for underlying causes of nurse shortages in the workforce of the United States.
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