Horizontal Violence: Stopping the Cycle

According to the Gallup Poll, Nurses are still the #1 most trusted professionals. This is most likely due to the long history of self-sacrifice, understanding, acceptance, and tenderness that Nursing has.  Unfortunately, what many people do not realize is that cliques, gossip, judgment, and coldness are also found between coworkers within the healthcare setting.  This is known as horizontal violence.  Nurses are often very adept at hiding these problems from patients and their families, but the effects this violence (or bullying) has on individual nurses and the overall hospital morale are very real.  

 Bullying between nurses deflects our attention from our true purpose (serving others, caring, bringing comfort) and draws it to negative thoughts, feelings and actions that are either truly unimportant, or are simply wrong.  The problem is that many nurses, especially nursing students or new nurses, begin to think that it is normal to be pushed around or ignored and so begin to accept it as normal.  This is so heartbreaking! We enter the nursing profession with grand ideas of the impact and change we will have on patient's lives... wonderful thoughts of how caring and loving we will be.  But then we let negative experiences and frustrations with our facility or other nurses affect the way we treat each other and our patients, and this becomes our new normal.  You must be careful of what you tolerate, for what you tolerate you will soon accept, and what you accept will eventually become a part of you.

As a future nurse, I am dedicating my life to showing love, compassion, and understanding to those that are physically, mentally, or emotionally distressed.  How can I and other nurses commit our lives to treating others in this caring, and in my opinion, Christ-like manner when we cannot even treat other nurses with love? It is my responsibility to show the same respect and kindness to other nurses that I would expect from them.  True change can only happen if most, if not all, nurses commit to truly creating within our professional circles the environment of compassion, respect, and care that we are known for publically.  But it must begin with individual change.  It must begin with me.  We have all heard it a million times, but Jesus truly did say it best when He said, "So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets" (Matthew 7:12, ESV).   

Nurses are held to an extreme standard of reliability, trustworthiness, and kindness.  How can we uphold this standard and be what people believe us to be if we cannot even love and trust one another?  We as nurses encounter people at their darkest times... the times in which the most love and compassion is needed.  In order to show this love to our patients, we must be able to love each other as well.  "Let all that ye do be done in love" (1 Corinthians 16:14, NASB).  Be the change you want to see.  Keep nursing as the #1 most trusted profession.  Do not get caught up in the violence... do not allow it to become "normal"... be careful of what you tolerate, for what you tolerate you will soon accept, and what you accept will eventually become a part of you.