Toxic Incivility at the Unit Level
Toxic Incivility at the Unit Level: Jeannie Walker just accepted a job as nurse manager for the ortho-neuro unit of a large community hospital. She recently graduated with her master’s degree in nursing with an emphasis on nursing leadership in healthcare settings. Excited about the new role and opportunities to influence positive changes on a nursing unit, Jeannie was not at all concerned when the human resources officer mentioned that the last three managers on the ortho-neuro unit left the position after 12 to 18
months. Jeannie had lots of clinical experience, and now armed with all that she had learned in graduate school, she was confident that she would be able to handle the management of the 32- bed unit with a staff consisting of 120 full- and part-time employees.
The human resources officer had told her that half of the staff were long-term employees, but the other half were fairly new to the unit. There seemed to be a lot of turnover among newer employees, but the long-term employees had worked on the unit an average of 20 years. Jeannie had aspirations of leading her unit in collaborative governance and hopefully influencing other directors and managers to begin the Magnet® journey.
Toxic Incivility at the Unit Level
Over the course of a few months, Jeannie tried to establish a Unit Practice Council (UPC) and a Research and Evidence-Based Practice (REBP) Council, but few of the staff volunteered to participate on either of the councils. Jeannie sought a handful of nurses who she believed would be strong leaders and talked with them about her vision for empowering the nurses through council involvement. She was shocked to hear a resounding “no” from the nurses, who shared that they were afraid to participate. Hence, the repetitive answer from many of the nurses was “I only want to do my job and go home.” Therefore, as Jeannie inquired more and more, she discovered that the staff were. APA
