Horizontal Workplace Violence

Home Health Care Management & Practice / December 2007 / Volume 20, Number 1, 82-83 DOI: 10.1177/1084822307305723 © 2007 Sage Publications When we think of workplace violence, we most often think of nurses experiencing abusive behavior from clients, families, or physicians; however, in reality the health care workplaces are laden with dysfunctional nurse-to-coworker behavior referred to as horizontal violence (Baltimore, 2006). The distinction of this workplace violence is that it is performed by nurse colleagues or coworkers. Horizontal violence makes nurses feel uncomfortable, so there is a tendency to “sweep it under the carpet” and for supervisors to “look the other way.” When this abusive behavior is tolerated, it becomes accepted, which has allowed nurses to continue this selfand professionaldefeating behavior. It is endemic in the workplace culture and is an unacceptable and destructive phenomenon (Hastie, 2002). Even though horizontal violence has been reported in the nursing literature for more than 20 years, it has only been recently that it has received a heightened attention (Dunn, 2003; Fudge, 2006).