Nursing Work Environment & Workplace Violence. Health, Medicine Paper

Nursing Work Environment Workplace Violence
Students Name
Institutional Affiliation
Nursing Work Environment: Workplace Violence
Introduction
Social, cultural, and political perceptions contribute to the issue of workplace violence. Various recommendations can be made to create a conducive work environment for nurses.
Scope
The research of this paper is aimed at identifying the various causes of workplace violence in the nursing environment. Such violence contributes a lot to the rate of medication errors being recorded in hospitals. The paper will focus on the various political, economic, and social perspectives contributing to workplace violence in a nursing environment. It will also provide an analysis of the multiple barriers that could exist in an attempt to eradicate the issue. The paper will conclude with recommendations of what ought to be done to ensure that nurses do not experience workplace violence. Therefore, through this research, hospitals can work to improve the nursing work environment to ensure that patients receive the best healthcare quality possible.
Situating the topic
It is the role of every organization to ensure that they create a conducive work environment for its employees. Such an environment is created through the provision of employees with sufficient resources and workload. Without adequate resources, workers would not be in a position to effectively achieve organizational goals. As well, work overload would reduce the effectiveness of the employees in performing a task. In the case of hospitals, the life and health of the patients are of a major concern hence the need to create a conducive work environment. However, this has not been the case since nurses have reported having subjected to workplace violence, which reduces their effectiveness in attending to patients (Ulrich, Gillespie, Boesch, Bateman & Grubb, 2017). The inconducive environment does not only affect the patients but also the future of the nurses in their field of work. The chances are high that such nurses might end up bullying their future colleges or being uncaring to offer quality healthcare. Besides, this threatens the future of medical care since nurses are expected to gain experience in their line of duty. Therefore, if a nurse is not subjected to a conducive work environment where they can learn, then they would present higher chances of performing medication errors. Such errors are associated with increased medical costs and the risk of death (Ganz, Levy, Khalaila, Arad, Bennaroch, Kolpak & Raanan, 2015). It is hence necessary to identify the various causes of workplace violence in the nursing environment in order to come up with possible solutions for eradicating such violence.
Articulating the issue
The nursing environment is one of the main aspects of the hospital, which contributes to the wellbeing of patients. Therefore, in the case where the nurses are not comfortable with the environment, it becomes challenging for them to provide patients with the best healthcare possible. In some cases, nurses may be required to work extra shifts, and they end up being fatigued. The novice nurses could also be pushed to work extra hours on behalf of senior nurses. Such overworking reduces their effectiveness in providing quality healthcare (Sauer & McCoy, 2017). Situations, where novice nurses are forced to perform minor procedures without the supervision of a senior nurse, could also be termed as workplace violence. Such cases could end up worsening the patient's condition. It is the role of the senior nurses to ensure that every procedure carried out on the patient is done in the right way. Novice nurses fear to lose their jobs, and therefore, they end up complying with the inconducive work environment (Berry, Gillespie, Gates & Schafer, 2012). The problem is that patients suffer the most because they don't receive the necessary quality of healthcare. A substantial number of medication errors recorded in the US re as a result of nurse bullying activities that contribute to workplace violence (Arnetz, Sudan, Fitzpatrick, Cotten, Jodoin, Chang & Arnetz, 2018). Therefore, this calls for hospitals to analyze their work environment to ensure that it is conducive for the nurses. If this is not done, then patients will keep on incurring extra medical costs as a result of the poor medical services offered due to workplace violence.
Analysis of the issue
Social, cultural perspective
Society might assume that every hospital has sufficient nurses to attend to patients. In real sense, most hospitals are struggling with insufficient personnel. This calls for nurses to take extra shifts and workload for them to be able to attend to the patients. Helping as many patients as possible is the wish of every nurse, but the question arises when they get fatigued from their extensive efforts. They and up prone to making medication errors. In some cases, patients are known to have been rude to nurses because they failed to provide them with timely care. What the patients fail to understand is that the lack of enough employees could be the cause of such delays. However, society can't ignore the fact that such delays could result in medication errors. Therefore, there is a lot of pressure on hospitals to create a conducive working environment by employing enough personnel, an act that would require funds.
In addition, the dominant culture in hospitals is that novice nurses have to work under the instructions of senior nurses. Going contrary to such a culture could result in the novice nurse having a difficult time in the workplace. The culture goes to the extent where novice nurses have to perform procedures on behalf of senior nurses (Pilch & Turska, 2015). Without supervision, the novice nurse is prone to make medication errors, which could put the life of the patient at risk. Therefore, this culture is a key leading factor to the causes of workplace violence because the nurses believe that it should be passed from one generation to another. As well, the culture might be perceived positively by the novice nurses, yet they are endangering the lives of patients. It is the role of a nurse to ensure that every patient receives the best care possible.
Political perspective
The federal government decides the amount of money allocated to various community hospitals. In turn, this has an impact on whether the hospital would have sufficient resources or not. In these where sufficient funds have not been allocated, then it becomes a challenge for the hospital to employ enough nurses. The outcome is that the available nurses would be required to take extra shifts to attend to all the patients. The quality of healthcare in such hospitals is less effective as compared to that offered in private hospitals with sufficient resources (Sportsman, 2018). In addition, corruption has become one of the leading factors affecting the ways in which public fund is allocated. Personal interest from some of the political leaders could be a contributing factor to the hospitals having insufficient resources. This means that if a change is not made on the top political leaders, then it will be difficult to address the issue of workplace violence as a result of insufficient personnel.
Economic perspective
Similar to other organizations, hospitals work their level best to cut costs. One way of doing this is by reducing the number of nurses. It might seem like an effective strategy of saving funds for other uses such as the purchase of machinery. However, it is rather a triggering factor in workplace violence. The nurses end up working extra shifts to meet the needs of patients (Yeun & Han, 2016). The extra working hours could result in them being f...