Workplace incivility refers to the low-intensity behavior characterized as discourteous and rude that has an ambiguous intent of harming a particular target and displaying lack of regards to other people in the working environment. In other words, it is the distinct form of violence. Workplace incivility is a common issue for many companies and businesses since it has been reported several times by employees from different capacities in the workplace.
Incivility is a momentous issue which has affected students, patients, and nurses for a lot of years perpetuating the employment of every new group of nurses. Workplace incivility may be manifested through various interactions and behaviors which may be direct with harassment actions and practice of rude behavior or also indirectly through online aggression or social undermining behaviors that to abuse through different actions such as psychological, physical, social and verbal actions ( Egues and Leinung, 2013). Incivility that occurs between individuals of the same workplace level is termed as horizontal or lateral whereas that between staffs from different hierarchical levels is termed as vertical (Birks et al, 2017).
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How incivility impacts an individual nurses’ ability to use high-level clinical judgment
Incivility in this work has a lot of downstream effects, these effects are however detrimental in workplaces that require teamwork and unity such as in the medical setting. In such environs, incivility can lead to a rise in medical errors and deterioration of a patient’s satisfaction together with other preventable adverse outcomes ( Lachman, 2015) .
A nurses’ profession is one which is mired in structure, order, and obedience that requires a strict code of conduct. On the contrary, modern nursing has been clouded by abuse and misuse of procedures that may easily place an individual nurse at a high risk for workplace incivility (Birks et al, 2017).
Incivility has harmful effects to organizations and the employees of the given organization. It also affects job satisfaction and this leads to a reduction in customers’ satisfaction. In the medical set up, considering the amount of work that a nurse puts in in the establishment of a required level of health care, a nurse contributes a lot to every single activity in the facility. This, therefore, requires him or her to be emotionally stable in order to help provide the best care to patients. However, incivility brings about emotional distress to a nurse, lowering her performance due to the fact that her judgments will be clouded by feelings, stress, and emotions because of the way the work environment is not favorable.
Patient care needs are put at risk as a result of consistent violence at work premises. Registered nurses are often less welcoming to a new wave of nursing professionals (Birks et al, 2017). This makes the patients care and needs to be tampered with because of the way a registered nurse overlooks at a new professional nurse instead of offering help an nurturing them on the developments and experiences acquired over the years.
The issues that occur with workplace or clinical site incivility
Incivility brings about a lot of issues in the workplace that have huge impacts on the performance and objectivity of an organization. For example in the nursing sector it puts the lives of patients at risk, the implementation of policies and procedures will not be at par and a number of injuries too might be sustained if the violence goes to high levels of physicality between the nurses ( American Nurses Association, 2015) . For new nurse staffs, despite having years of experience, some of them are unprofessionally treated as if they are not a part of the facility’s’ nursing team.
Incivility brings about a separation between nurses in any clinic making them prefer working in groups rather than a team due to the misunderstandings between them. This greatly affects the objectivity of a clinical site and the performance because instead of establishing and helping each other attain specified objectives, individual nurses will be reluctant to offer help or be slow in the process dragging the whole thing down. For example, senior nurses sometimes are slow to respond to calls for assistance and request on patient’s lifting or turn assistance. In addition, sometimes they are unreservedly torpid and this puts the safety of a patient as well as that of a nurse at great risk. Senior nurses are found to criticism and bullying behaviors that have to be witnessed painfully by other medical professionals. This lowers work morale among other nurses and risks lowering performance in the job too.
Effects of incivility on workplace or clinical site communication
Communication is an important factor in any organization since it helps relay information to superiors and also helps call for assistance when an individual gets stuck. It is a fundamental factor in the achievement of an organization’s goals. Effective communication is a work ethic that if affected by it will lead to serious consequences such as lower production and performance or even the fall of the whole organization.
In the medical setting, communication is the basic tool of interaction ranging from diagnosis to drug prescription nurses are therefore required to be attentive while offering healthcare to patients ( American Nurses Association, 2015) . In instances of incivility, communication relays are tampered with because people often refrain from communicating with uncivil individuals. Some nurses will have difficulties in addressing critical issues to people in a higher position because of the power indifference.
Current initiatives that organizations are implementing to decrease incivility within the workplace or clinical sites
Incidences of workplace incivility are as a result of lack of effective strategy for identification, management and the failure of addressing the problem itself. Some of the current initiatives being used by organizations in order to reduce incivility include education, policy changes, and leadership response.
Education
Providing education to nurses and students about the issue of incivility is a key strategy in making sure that they are prepared with effective ways on how to deal with a situational issue that often occurs in the workplaces. The method currently used to educate the nurses and students include discussion and role play activities together with case presentation ( Egues and Leinung (2013) .
Policy changes
Organizations have also implemented zero tolerance to violence in respective measures at the workplaces. Procedures have been laid on how these instances will be reported and dealt with. This has been important in establishing a strong culture in the workplace that promotes a healthy environment which is strategic in the prevention of violence (Lachman, 2015).
Leadership Response
Leaders in the workplaces are required to be consistent and swift in tackling issues about incivility, making sure that the laid policies are adhered to. Formal punishments are to be carried out to persons found not adhering to these laws. Actions following any occurrence of incivility behavior in the workplace should be considered to be a show of unanimity and base of zero tolerance for violence (Egues and Leinung, 2013, p.188)
Conclusion
It is clear that workplace incivility is widespread in the nursing profession with high impacts on the nurses themselves through emotional factors and stress. It also makes them ineffective in attending to patient care needs. Some of the issues that occur due to clinical site incivility include deterioration of patient care, injuries, and mismanagement of policies and procedure that are laid down to deal with such behaviors. Communication has also been identified to be a key issue in the workplace and due to incivility patients suffer and mistreatments are incurred because of the how information is not properly relayed. Some of the ways through which incivility can be handled are through education of nurses and students about the problem, establishment of effective policies to deal with the issue of incivility and also having leaders in the working places providing guidance to nurses on the problem and making sure that the set policies are adhered to. Solidarity is the key to overcome workplace incivility in the nursing profession.
References
American Nurses Association. (2015). Position statement: Incivility, bullying, and workplace violence. Nursing World Web site. Available at http://www. nursingworld. org/MainMenu Categories/WorkplaceSafety/Healthy-Nurse/bullyingwork placeviolence/Incivility-Bullying-and-Workplace-Violence. html. Published .
Birks, M., Cant, R. P., Budden, L. M., Russell-Westhead, M., Özçetin, Y. S. Ü., & Tee, S. (2017). Uncovering degrees of workplace bullying: A comparison of baccalaureate nursing students’ experiences during clinical placement in Australia and the UK. Nurse education in practice , 25 , 14-21.
Egues, A. L., & Leinung, E. Z. (2013, July). The bully within and without: strategies to address horizontal violence in nursing. In Nursing Forum (Vol. 48, No. 3, pp. 185-190).
