Janet M. Reed, RN BSN, MSN

Reducing Lateral Violence: A humanistic educational approach

Tags: bullying education Lateral Violence new graduate nurses reducing violence teaching violence

We’ve all witnessed it: the gossip, backbiting, and bullying that too often occurs in the nursing workplace. Lateral violence (LV), also known as horizontal violence or workplace bullying, consists of behaviors including “bullying, intimidation, sarcasm, back-stabbing, criticism, exclusion, and various forms of unequal treatment”. LV has been a topic of ongoing topic of concern in nursing for many years and is particularly prevalent in female dominated professions. LV is often attributed to oppression theory, which states that nurses are an oppressed group because they are deemed less important than others (such as medical practitioners); therefore, nurses often lack autonomy and control over their profession which results in powerlessness and displaced aggression towards other nurses.