Bullying, Moral Courage, Patient Safety, and the Bariatric Nurse

In the 2000 publication, To Err is Human, experts reported that as many as 98,000 people die in any given year from medical errors that occur in U.S. hospitals. In 2012, William Charney argues that, to make matters worse, this has been a growing problem for more than a decade, with little to no systemic approach to address the problem. Charney explains that, in 2009, 788,558 deaths in the United States occurred as a result of medical errors and hospital acquired infections, representing one-third of all deaths in America that year.1 This article explores the role of the bariatric nurse in developing moral courage to address the threat of workplace bullying on patient safety.