A Time for Change: Preparing Nurses to Combat Incivility and Bullying in the Workplace

A very serious and continually emerging issue in the nursing profession is the prevalence of incivility and bullying. This may be from peers, leadership, or physicians, or patients and new nurses must come into their jobs equipped to handle these situations as they arise. This topic is of utmost importance when the future of nursing is considered. New graduate nurses are more likely to experience stressors from providing patient care as well as interpersonally that may cause them to not only leave their job, but to leave their career as a nurse (Mellor et al., 2017). Mellor et al. (2017) noted that bullying is a particularly troubling topic for new nurses because it can negatively impact their ability to do their job. Wilson (2016), concluded that patient safety is also at risk if new nurses are being bullied because those nurses are more likely to make mistakes due to feelings of inadequacy or inability to concentrate as a result of worrying about their work climate. In addition to affecting new nurses, incivility is also a problem for student nurses. Furst (2018) found that over 86% of nursing students surveyed reported experiencing incivility in a clinical experience. Throughout the literature there are many studies that look at ways to decrease bullying, but since this is multifactorial in nature, it is best to start with ways to educate nurses and nursing students on how to respond to bullying and incivility when it arises. Educational interventions provided in nursing programs or in new nurse residency programs have the ability to do just that. According to Lasater et al. (2015), the effects of incivility on nurses can include physiologic responses as well as burnout, decreased job satisfaction, and turnover. It is more important now than ever that nurses feel supported in their work and are able to express concerns freely. This benchmark seeks to provide educational interventions to new nurses during their new nurse residency program over a six week span that will allow them to not only recognize incivility, but also to respond to it in a productive manner. In turn this project will aim to help increase job satisfaction while decreasing staff turnover and burnout