Verbal Abuse From Nurse Colleagues and Work Environment of Early Career Registered Nurses
Intimidating and disruptive aggressive behaviors in the nursing workplace such as bullying, harassment, and verbal abuse contribute to medical errors, poor patient outcomes, and nurse turnover.
In order to better understand who experiences verbal abuse, investigators analyzed national survey data from early career nurses. They used a shortened version of the Verbal Abuse Scale to determine the frequency that a nurse experienced verbal abuse in the last three months. Verbal abused included situations of yelling, swearing, insulting, obscene comments, speaking condescendingly, making humiliating comments disguised as a joke, and ignoring.
Nearly half the respondents experienced some verbal abuse from nurse colleagues at least once; 5 percent more than five times, over the previous three months, most frequently being spoken to in a condescending manner or ignored.
Nurses experiencing verbal abuse were most often White females, married, without children younger than 6 years old, worked in a hospital but not a magnet hospital, and provided direct care on 12-hour day shifts. Those with moderate to high verbal abuse were planning on leaving their current position in the next year but not the nursing profession. Verbal abuse was more frequent in unfavorable work environments and those with inadequate staffing levels, though the relationship was not necessarily causal.
The RN Work Project
- 1. A Comparison of Second-Degree Baccalaureate and Traditional-Baccalaureate New Graduate RNs
- 2. Understanding New Registered Nurses' Intent to Stay at Their Jobs
- 3. The Nursing Career Process from Application Through the First 2 Years of Employment
- 4. What Newly Licensed Registered Nurses Have to Say about Their First Experiences
- 5. New Nurses Views of Quality Improvement Education
- 6. Early Career RNs' Perceptions of Quality Care in the Hospital Setting
- 7. Commuting to Work
- 8. The Relative Geographic Immobility of New Registered Nurses Calls for New Strategies to Augment that Workforce
- 9. Charting the Course for Nurses' Achievement of Higher Education Levels
- 10. Verbal Abuse From Nurse Colleagues and Work Environment of Early Career Registered Nurses
- 11. Early-Career Registered Nurses' Participation in Hospital Quality Improvement Activities
- 12. Positive Work Environments of Early-Career Registered Nurses and the Correlation with Physician Verbal Abuse
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