Horizontal violence in Nursing is present on a daily basis. Horizontal violence consists of criticisms, intimidations, threats, innuendos, gossiping, bullying, and passive aggressive behaviors (just to name a few behaviors) against other nurses.
This blog section is for those who seen this happen or have experienced it directly. Tell me you stories, share you pain and dis-enchantment caused by this destructive behavior.
Sandy
16 comments:
What do you do if your Nurse Manager is fully aware of the exessive horizontal violence within the work place, but choses to do nothing about it? PLEASE HELP!!
This might be the time to go above your Manager - follow the chain of command. Either that or seek assistance through Employee relations at your facility.
What if the issues go well beyond a few "bad attitudes"? This involves daily illegal doings and unethical behaviors.
Ok - illegal doings and ethical issues brings you to a cross roads - do you just ignore it and actually be a co-conspiritor in proliferating this behavior by ignoring it....or do you take the chance and report it up higher?
You can always go to your boss but if they are the one perpetuating the problem - that is not a viable solution. How about the bosses, boss - are they open and receptive? If not - read on!
If you have Employee Relations at your place of work - I would suggest that is a place to go. Tell them about it - they are good at keeping things pretty confidential...another possibilty -does corporate offices or your facility have a confidential reporting line - where you report illegal things, even ethical things that might compromise the company? Most companies have such a line - its usually called the corporate compliance line.
Good luck to you....Remember - not taking action is actually - taking an action.
I want to express my disappointment with your Leadership Department. To expose everyone of us, only to be viewed as troublemakers, has made the situation worse than ever!! No good has come from it. Horizontal violence and micro-inequities originates from poor management. Why are you not going back to the people?
The great thing about an anonymous blog is that it is anonymous - the bad thing is that it is anonymous. If you are suffering retribution from something that we addressed - we have to know the who, what , when, and where of it if you want us to try to stop it. If confidentiality of the information was broken - I need specifics to stop it. Evidently there is more going on than we are aware of. I promise you that if this is happening - its very, very wrong and has never been the intent of our educational process. Although I suspect that I know where you are from, the leadership department has focused on horizontal violence with hundreds of employees. I need more information to address this issue. You know how to get hold of me - if you want your complaints escalated - contact me personally. If you are not confident in our ability to help you - I urge you to contact employee relations and let them know what is going on. You may not feel it now, but there are a lot of people that care about how people are treated. What you are experiencing is wrong. Remember the right path to take is often the hardest road to travel.
I am trying to understand the politics of the administration in reference to expecting change. We have had formal meetings regarding adressing the need for change due to repetitive comments from our department indicating disatisfaction with management. We also had individualized opportunities to express where the areas of concerns lie to be able to identify specific processes, attitudes, persons, etc that may be linked to the continued discord in the department. Yet the mismanagement of the department continues and in some situations has worsened. I am assuming the upper level management only knows what it is being told. Instead of inquiring at the employee level to see if change was initiated as promised by the upper level person stated such change would happen. As an employee who in this economic times is fearful of retaliation for noting that change did not occur and the members remain in a hostile and unfair situation what are we to do? I would not expect others to risk their job security with elevating these concerns. Yet how do we continue to work in such an unfair and hostile environment? What else is discerning and curious is how the administrative financial guru's allow such abuse of the system min such financial times. Have you ever heard in a hospital based system where the night shift has more employees working (at premium pay) than any other shift? Aslo why would it be allowable and accecptable that soem of these employees also perform non-nursing duties (i.e., statistics) again during the night shift time at premium pay? As an employee who works with less people on a regular basis and yet observes this abuse of our department financial dollars which could be better served for having staff available to serve out patients is an outrage. How can this continue? What are we to do without retaliation? Thank you for letting me vent. Any suggestions which won't pose a risk to our job security since our manager is the one allowing such an abuse.
Sandy,
The department manager, the unit director, leadership, and employee relations are FULLY aware of the dysfunction within my small department. Due to the simple reason the department is run by fear and intimidation, yes, at this point, I too fear retaliation, considering the manager has hosilely announced on several occasions, "there's the door." Poor leadership and inappropriate management relationships have caused the demise of what used to be a productive and respected unit. Now that the majority of employees are disconnected, devalued, and totally frustrated, should you choose to revisit the 30-35 employees,one wonders how truthful they will be. We trusted your leadership department before, were tape recorded in (?)September,2008 and saw no changes. Let's not forget that 2 shifts are now viewed as "TROUBLEMAKERS" which has actually made the situation escalate. You personally stood in front of my entire department during your lecture on Horizontal Violence back in (?)6/08 and stated you were once a victim. We come to you again in hopes you will listen to the people and NOT management. PLEASE HELP!!
You state that people have gone to employee relations but they did not help. I again encourage you to go to them for help. They have to keep confidentiality if you ask them to. They are aware there are issues - but they can not address them unless someone goes to them.
If you absolutely don't want to involve them, I can only tell you of your options - which I am sure that you know. You hang in there until the system can work - which it will - but probably not in an rapid enought time frame for you. The other option is to seek employement in another department and return to your department once the problems are resolved. The third option is to leave the facility - but I truely hope you don't do that. We need people like you who are trying to fix a situation that is not optimal.
I will continue to spread the concern upward, sideways, any way that I think will help. I am so very sorry for your situation....I know that doesn't help you but it is true. I have been there more than once - Sometimes I stayed until the situation corrected itself, sometimes I took my toys elsewhere to play. If you are as stressed and upset as you write, you have to make the best decision for you. I will keep trying on my end to get some resolution - people going to employee relations would assist me in resolving the issues.
Sandy,
I don't know if you saw the blog written by an anonymous person dated 2/15/09 @ 7:48pm. You did not respond to that individual. Just know there appears to be several of us writing out of desperation!
Employee Relations visited the department during the Gallop Poll period, due to our "situation." Needless to say, we never heard back from them, or perhaps they were not invited back.
At this point, we all fear retaliation because upper management is ignoring a huge negligent problem. All I ask is that you listen to the people and not the "culprits."
Thank you for taking the time and consistantly responding to me. I truly do appreciate your professional advice and do feel you care.
I noticed that you did mention Employee Relations as an avenue to elevate complaints. Who is the person that would be identified in that dept.? How is that complaint process handled? What wouold be the fair expectation of a typical intervention when an employee does go and complain?
When an employee makes a complaint against a manger of a dept who has been employed at the hospital for 30+ yrs and has been in various management positions-why would the complaint even be validated or investigated? Obviously this manager has functioned at this level during her career-the only difference may be the growth within that dept and with that having more employees which means more personalities to manage.
With that being said this manager has a reputatin of being kind and approachable. I don't believe the fall of this dept is entirely on her shoulders. I do know that the beginnings are directly correlated with the relationship that was established with one employee who abused and used that power for negative outcomes. So back to my observation and question-do you think it is reasonable and even prudent to expect change when you approach the employee relations dept. Or even just a investigation that would not include a meeting with our manager and her manager in front of the whole dept-no one is going to day a word. Anyway I want to believe change is inevitable and I understand the politics of administration. But I have great doubt that it won't change and if the manager leaves maybe it would but by then the upper level management will not really understand the internal workings of the dept and the problem will continue to exist. But maybe I am cynical! Thanks for listening and advising. At least I have a venue to vent.
The name of the person I recommend you talk to is Rosemary Hunt - in employee relations -tell her I sent you. Change can happen. Upper Administration does care and are working on an intervention now. Give them time to do their own review. There is a meeting coming in the future. Watch for it and be sure to attend it. If you are not satisfied - go and see Rosemary...Good luck and I am always here to listen.
WE would have LOVED to attended the meeting IF WE were invited. That was not the case, like usual! I know you are trying to help, I can see shuffling occuring. Thanks for that.
Hang in there - staff meetings are being set up - make sure you attend them. We are still trying to get this resolved!
Thank you!!
It's amazing how the fear of reprisal keeps lips closed during meetings where there's a hint of hopefulness in the air. Fairness...why does such a simple word seem like such a difficult task. In my department, the grandest display of favoritism is reflected in the schedule. We have one particular shift that does the schedule for our entire department, and apparently, to those of us that know how to balance a check book, the job isn't being carried out very successfully. The amount of overtime that they've managed to rack up for themselves over the past 6 months pales only in comparison to that of the stimulus package by our govenment. Could we try letting someone else (even outside the department) to do the schedule? Someone that is more concerned about fulfilling the needs of the department vs their friends pocket books? Personal agendas have never been a party favorite. Well...maybe in Washington.
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