During a workplace conflict, nursing leaders and nursing managers have to take an active role and intervene. A document that describes their differing roles is the position statement developed by the Professional Issues Panel on Incivility, Bullying, and Workplace Violence of the American Nursing Association (ANA) (2015). The document states that nursing leaders need to become familiar with incivility and bullying prevention policies and procedures. If no such policies exist, leaders are obligated to take part in their development. Nursing leaders establish a system of code words and signals as well as incident reporting to facilitate information spread and exchange. At all times, nursing leaders need to uphold standards of professional demeanor and be role models for treating others with dignity and respect. In turn, nursing managers take action on a larger scale: they develop anti-bullying policies, organize training sessions, and orient new employees. They may also establish evidence-based practice committees that could brainstorm solutions to bullying-related problems.
Fighting workplace terror is quite difficult since official measures are not only ineffective but also increase tensions within the collective. A leader who seeks to rid the team of bullying manifestations must, first of all, take a strictly neutral position. Further, it is necessary to define a “trust agent,” like a “change agent” in the case of large-scale corporate changes, with whom it will be possible to communicate about conflicts in the team on the condition of anonymity. He or she will not only help to identify the problem but will also actively participate in drawing up a plan to solve the problem (Roussel et al., 2018). In the process of implementing this plan, training, workshops, courses for managers, and team building sessions may be held. In addition, business companies often stipulate responsibility for bullying in employee contracts. Awareness of responsibility greatly reduces the risk of such conflicts. These practices can be successfully applied in a medical institution.
In addition, it is possible to not only fight against the manifestations of bullying in the team but also to prevent its occurrence even at the stage of the inception of the conflict. This requires the use of an effective leadership style and concept. For this reason, the WHO Regional Office for Europe has embarked on plans to establish a Pan-European Academy for Transformational Leadership (Roberie, 2020). Researchers believe that, in general, this style of leadership is more productive than traditionally applied in healthcare transactional leadership (Saleh et al., 2018). Dussault and Frenette (2015) empirically proved that out of all leadership styles, it was transformational leadership that was negatively associated with bullying. Transformational leaders influence the core attitudes and values of people in organizations, creating a shared vision of reality that enables them to successfully achieve organizational goals.
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