Effective strategies to eliminate lateral violence in nursing and nursing education
Fred Calixtro
Roseman University of Health Sciences,USA
: J Nurs Patient Care
Abstract
Lateral violence (LV) is a common problem for new nurses and student nurses in the workplace. LV in the workplace is not healthy for nurses or their patients. The prospect of seasoned nurses “eating their young” creates stress and low morale among newly registered nurses and nursing students. Students learn a set of “ideals” about nursing practice in the classroom, but they sometimes find applying these ideals to clinical practice challenging because of the complexity of a patient’s condition, differences in preceptors’ experience and practice, and continuing changes in the health care delivery system. If students approach clinical practice by attempting to reinforce the importance of their own beliefs and ideals, and by adopting an attitude that what they have learned in the classroom is the “only way and right way,” they may become disillusioned and come to the mistaken conclusion that nurses who really care for their patients’ well-being are rare in the real world. More often than not, students succeed by choosing to adopt the real-world practice they observe in the clinical setting, and they gradually disregard the basic nursing practices they were taught in nursing school. The primary purpose of this project is to develop to a workshop to teach nursing students how to handle lateral violence. The use of cognitive rehearsal and cue cards in order for the nursing students communicate effectively to nurses and health care providers will prevent the LV in the workplace.