Advancing a civil workplace culture has been a topic of interest in the current healthcare practice. Daily in nursing practice and training, nurses have to deal with some level of workplace incivility in many settings (Crawford et al., 2019). The impact of workplace incivility in nursing has been felt in more stressful environments such as emergency care units and operation units. This paper aims to describe this health issue, its impact on collaboration in nursing, its significance in nursing practice, and propose a solution to this issue.
Description of the Issue
Workplace incivility in nursing encompasses activities and behaviors that include but are not limited to bullying, eye-rolling, silent treatment, horizontal violence, and bullying, among other behaviors in the nursing workplace. In nursing education, incivility manifests as a lack of professionalism, disrespect to learners, and making these learners feel unwanted or ignored (Zhu et al., 2019). In worst-case scenarios, incivility in nursing education can present as illegal activities such as abuse, either sexual or physical, according to Zhu et al. (2019). Nursing incivility behaviors can be overt or covert. These behaviors can be perpetrated verbally or nonverbally. Disrespectful behaviors from staff toward learners can have consequences on civility in the long term because future nurses who will try to emulate these behaviors they learn from seniors.
Perpetrators of nursing incivility can be multiple in a single workplace. In most cases, the senior nurse practitioners or students are the key perpetrators of incivility (Stalter et al., 2020). Junior nurses experience uncivil nursing behaviors from instructors, healthcare assistants, subordinate workers, and sometimes physicians (Green, 2019). In other cases, these activities are horizontal. Behaviors are directed from fellow nurses and perpetrators are nurses of the same cadre in practice. Nursing incivility, especially bullying, aims at removing the victim’s power through aggression (Howard, 2019). Some cases of incivility can be deemed trivial in practice, but their impacts go beyond aggression and ego and power struggles.
Impacts of Nursing Incivility
Nursing workplace incivility impacts not only the individual victims but also the healthcare organization, the healthcare system, and the nursing profession. These impacts are organizational, academic, work unit-related, or personal (Crawford et al., 2019). Nursing, as a profession, is a system that relies on collaboration internally and with other professions to promote their interventions and achieve goals in care. These behaviors can seem insignificant but may have far-reaching negative consequences on nursing practice. The victims of nursing incivility can intentionally quit the profession or intentionally reduce their work effort.
The prevailing workforce shortage and availability or demand of nurses in the market are used to mask the impacts of incivility (Green, 2019). When these victims decide to stay in the profession, their intentions to leave the work or profession are always higher due to incivility. They spend a substantial amount of time worrying about their work and practice (Bar-David, 2018). In worse cases, the victims may take their frustrations on the clients. Therefore, patient safety is jeopardized just because of workplace incivility. The risk of medication and medical errors rises due to frustration. Viciously, this culture can be passed down to learners who later practice uncivil behaviors in the workplace (Andersen et al., 2019). Poor mental health has been reported among nurses who experience workplace incivility (Howard, 2019). This impacts their productivity and the quality of the care they offer.
Significance of the Issue
Nursing workplace incivility is a universal issue that silently undermines the quality of care. By jeopardizing patient safety, patient satisfaction reduces. Work efficiency and effectiveness are also likely to reduce due to a lack of motivation and high intention to quit work or profession. This issue thus can be addressed in the early steps, that is, nursing education and the workplace, to mitigate its negative impact on the healthcare system and profession. The nursing profession was built on Caritas and tenderness and upholding these virtues to our clients, it is only logical that the nurses show them to their colleagues first. Addressing civility in the workplace improves nurses’ and nurse administrators’ leadership and administrative skills.
Proposed Solution
Addressing nursing workplace incivility can be achieved by evidence-based practice (EBP). Evidence-based teaching strategies promote systems thinking that would prevent patient harm by improving patient outcomes (Stalter et al., 2020).
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