Workplace bullying is repeated, aggressive action towards a victim, which especially affects new graduate nurses and can inhibit growth and lead to nursing burnout and staff turnover. The purpose of this Doctor of Nursing Practice project was to develop a clinical resource educational module. The case scenarios were developed using literature on workplace bullying and lateral violence. Clegg's circuits of power theory was applied to frame the organizational authoritative nursing power struggles that exist as a circular flow between different nursing group members, and the American Nurses Association (ANA) Practice Standards and Code of Ethics guided the assertive communication. The case scenarios consisted of 3 vignettes, terms and definitions, a summary of the ANA practice and code of ethical standards, the Appraisal of Guidelines Research and Evaluation (AGREE) II instrument, Workplace Bullying Inventory, Organizational Predictors and Consequences of Bullying Scale, flip cards, and content readability evaluation forms. The AGREE II instrument is a 7-point Likert scale for evaluating clinical guidelines with a threshold standard of 70%. The results of advisory committee members' rigor scores (mean = 50.8, median = 31, SD = 3.03) were compared with the scores of nurse evaluators (mean = 50, median = 31, SD = 4). The AGREE II reliability score is 0.93, with similar results found for the advisory members (0.939) and the nurse evaluators (0.941). The overall findings suggest that the AGREE II is a viable instrument for evaluating case scenarios, which can be used to improve the workplace environment for nurses by addressing workplace bullying.

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Most nurses experience lateral violence (LV) during their careers. LV can be detrimental to nurses' livelihoods and careers, to facilities due to nurse replacement costs, to the nursing profession due to attrition, and to patient safety. The purpose of this staff education project was to educate registered nurses on the issue of LV and to equip nurses to respond to their aggressors. The project question addressed whether education would increase awareness of LV and empower nurses to stand up to their aggressors. The theory of the nurse as the wounded healer, social learning theory, and the theory of reciprocal determinism guided this project. Pretest, posttest, and evaluation data were collected from 155 nurse participants who completed an online education module. Data were analyzed by calculating the change scores between pretests and posttests and by assessing the evaluation data based on the number of nurses who answered at the highest positive levels on a Likert-style scale. Results showed a 24.64% increase in awareness from the pretest to posttest. Evaluation data indicated that nurses felt they had a better understanding of LV, felt better equipped to confront their aggressors, were concerned about the incidence of LV in the workplace, and wanted further education. Findings may be used to support positive change through routine education on LV to enable nurses to identify LV behaviors and use strategies including cognitive rehearsal, conflict resolution, and emotional intelligence to combat LV and change the culture of the nursing profession.

By the year 2025, the nursing workforce shortage will exceed 500,000 registered nurses (RN). Hospitals will primarily experience this loss. The retention of RNs is a critical issue for hospitals, and studies about RNs leaving jobs in hospital nursing are essential to addressing the workforce shortage. Limited data exists about why RNs leave hospital nursing, other than job dissatisfaction. There is limited current data on whether horizontal violence, bullying, and intraprofessional conflict between RNs influence such decisions. This qualitative phenomenological study explored RNs’ experiences of horizontal violence, bullying, and intraprofessional conflict in hospital nursing. Findings suggest behaviors such as alienation, intimidation, sabotage, lack of intellectual respect, and failed professionalism contribute to horizontal violence and intraprofessional conflict among RNs in the hospital workplace. These findings may help develop strategies to educate healthcare teams and hospital administrative staff, and lobby for universal anti-horizontal violence and anti-bullying policies in hospitals. The findings highlight the need for conflict management training for RNs and healthcare workers, to facilitate intraprofessional communication and collaboration, and the need for further research.

Incivility has infiltrated our institutions of higher learning as well as the world of nursing. All too familiar in nursing is the phrase “eating their young,” which aptly describes how nurses treat other nurses, even though they should be nurturing and caring professionals. The investigator explored nursing and health science students’ perceptions of student and faculty uncivil behaviors within the academic environment, seeking the levels and frequency of the problem. Bandura’s social learning theory presents a sound theoretical framework for this dissertation. The research methodology consisted of a quantitative descriptive approach. The Incivility in Higher Education-Revised (IHE-R) Survey was used to compare nursing and health science student perceptions of the level and frequency of student and faculty incivility. Descriptive statistics and independent t tests were used to compare the different student perceptions. The study results indicated that perceptions of student behavioral levels were between somewhat and moderately uncivil. Student perceptions of faculty behavioral levels were found to be more moderate. Review of the frequency levels reflected students’ frequencies to be never as compared with faculty, which indicated a frequency of sometimes. These results indicated that students perceived incivility to not be problematic within their individual programs, although it found faculty behavior levels were more uncivil even when similar behaviors were demonstrated by students. In general, these results were atypical than other results as incivility is found to be a rising problem. Further study is needed to confirm these results.

The field of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) traditionally encompasses care and education for children aged from birth to eight years. In this study, the focus is specifically on the field that provides services for children in prior to school settings, that being the birth to five sector. This sector is highly feminised and has emerged over the last century from philanthropic roots. Despite considerable work into leadership in other areas, until recent times, attention to aspects of leadership has been limited within the ECEC field and much of the research undertaken has focused heavily on centre-based leadership. This study investigated how personnel, from a range of services, understand and enact leadership. In terms of data analysis it draws heavily on symbolic interactionism as a methodological tool and engages standpoint feminist theory to inform the analytical process. Data were gathered from semi-structured interviews with twenty-six participants who also identified artefacts, which they considered influenced and supported their understandings of leadership. In addition, two focus groups were conducted to explore themes emerging from early analysis of the data. Findings indicate two categories, which emerge as relevant to how leadership is understood and enacted by participants. The first of these is the concept of interpreted professional identity, which reflects participants' interpretations of who they are as early childhood professionals informed by their own views and the views of others. How individuals interpret their sense of self (manifest in their professional identity) is influential in the secondary category, which is interpreted leadership capacity. This category reflects participants' leadership activity or inactivity. The analysis reflects a complex interplay between how participants interpret their professional sense of self (interpreted professional identity) and their capacity and willingness to enact leadership (interpreted leadership capacity). Individuals in the formation of their professional identity interpret factors, both internal to the ECEC field and external (through social expectations). The culture of the ECEC field (internal factors) includes competing elements such as a discourse of niceness juxtaposed against examples of horizontal violence. Factors external to the field suggest there are lingering social associations between heroic male images and leadership, which make women as leaders problematic. Within a highly feminised field such as ECEC, this study brings new perspectives to understandings of leadership and its enactment.