The role of Nurse Leaders in resolving Lateral Workplace Violence.

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FUNMILOLA OMO-OLAOYE

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Introduction

Lateral violence is a common phenomenon in a nursing workplace. It refers to a group of people in a workplace working together to undermine or attack another person or persons, mainly manifesting through harassment that result in hostility towards the victim. The harassments may include intimidations, criticism, intimidations, threats, discouragement, exclusion, disinterest, and verbal abuses, among others (Nemeth et al., 2017). Over years, nurses have faced lateral workplace violence constantly, where they employ an enduring behavior worsened by insults, malicious, and intimidating patterns (Bambi et al., 2018). This violence results in power abuse, and the victims may feel humiliated, vulnerable, menace, and distress (Nemeth et al., 2017).

Nurse leaders have an essential role of ensuring that lateral workplace violence does not exist in the workplace. They solve the issues and implement policies and rules that warns employees on the punishments associated with such violence. For instance, they may develop zero-tolerance ratios for any workplace hostility outline (Vessey & Williams, 2021), which ensures high quality care, teamwork, improved health outcomes, and advancement due to research in the workplace. Failure to solve the lateral violence may cause serious implications for the institution and the victims (Vessey & Williams, 2021). Lateral workplace violence may have effects such as mental health challenges among the victims, alongside comprised physical health. Possibly leading to long term sickness and unplanned absences. Lateral workplace violence may lead to high turnover rate due to reduction in job satisfaction and the sense of being committed to the employer. A high turnover rate implies a reduction in the quality of care due to detachment from their jobs (Bambi et al., 2018). There is therefore an increasing need to deal with lateral violence to eradicate such effects and ensure quality care in nursing institutions.

In a health care setting, lateral workplace violence exist. It is an inappropriate and disruptive behavior that is mainly demonstrated by one employee or another, either having a lesser or an equal position (Sanner-Stiehr & Ward-Smith, 2017). When this occurs, it can be openly displayed and occur in a repetitive nature, escalating over time. Although the acts may appear harmless, they tend to affect nurses by making them uncomfortable in their jobs. 

Lateral violence affects nurses by decreasing their sense of well-being and affecting their physical health. This makes them depressed, and they may ultimately resign from their jobs with time if nothing is done to solve the issue (Chu & Evans, 2016)-it causes a shortage of nurses, which causes the remaining nurses to be overloaded with more tasks; an increase in the tasks leads to reduction in the quality of care. There are several important consequences of high nursing workload. Research shows t