Negative behaviours in health care: Prevalence and strategies.

AIM: To evaluate the effectiveness of a professionalism taskforce and the prevalence of negative behaviours across interdisciplinary groups at a south-eastern US academic medical centre. BACKGROUND: Negative behaviours within health care organisations may undermine patient safety. These behaviours are associated with decreased productivity, increased turnover, and poor patient and staff outcomes. METHODS: A pre-post study design using an adapted instrument, the Negative Behaviors in HealthCare (NBHC) survey, assessed perceptions of negative behaviours by physicians, clinical, and managerial staff both before and after a professionalism taskforce was convened in 2012 to identify and promulgate key strategies to improve behaviours. RESULTS: The 1,980 respondents completed the pre-survey in January 2012 and 1,423 completed the post-survey in 2014. Significant reductions in use of lateral aggression (LA) and vertical aggression (VA) (χ2  = 5.65, p < 0.017), observation of LA and VA (χ2  = 4.90, p < 0.027), and experience with contributing factors associated with negative behaviours (χ2  = 9.03, p < 0.003) were identified. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that a professionalism taskforce guiding key strategies to elevate professionalism significantly affected beliefs about lateral and vertical aggression. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: Decreasing negative behaviours in health care will require additional strategies and consistent implementation. Additional research addressing fear, retaliation, and job stress, and linking these behaviours to patient safety outcomes, is required.

Lateral Violence in Nursing Survey: Instrument Development and Validation.

An examination of the psychometric properties of the Lateral Violence in Nursing Survey (LVNS), an instrument previously developed to measure the perceived incidence and severity of lateral violence (LV) in the nursing workplace, was carried out. Conceptual clustering and principal components analysis were used with survey responses from 663 registered nurses and ancillary nursing staff in a southeastern tertiary care medical center. Where appropriate, Cronbach's alpha (α) evaluated internal consistency. The prevalence/severity of lateral violence items constitute two distinct subscales (LV by self and others) with Cronbach's alpha of 0.74 and 0.86, respectively. The items asking about potential causes of LV are unidimensional and internally consistent (alpha = 0.77) but there is no conceptually coherent theme underlying the various causes. Respondents rating a potential LV cause as "major" scored higher on both prevalence/severity subscales than those rating it a "minor" cause or not a cause. Subsets of items on the LVNS are internally reliable, supporting construct validity. Revisions of the original LVNS instrument will improve its use in future work.

Genome Sequence of Mycobacteriophage Momo.

Momo is a newly discovered phage of Mycobacterium smegmatis mc(2)155. Momo has a double-stranded DNA genome 154,553 bp in length, with 233 predicted protein-encoding genes, 34 tRNA genes, and one transfer-messenger RNA (tmRNA) gene. Momo has a myoviral morphology and shares extensive nucleotide sequence similarity with subcluster C1 mycobacteriophages.

Examining lateral violence in the nursing workforce.

The decision to examine the phenomenon of lateral violence within the nursing workforce of a Southeastern tertiary care medical center evolved from the strong response of attendees to a nursing presentation on lateral violence. This paper describes the development and testing of the Lateral Violence in Nursing Survey. This questionnaire, designed to measure perceived incidence and severity of lateral violence, was administered online to 663 nursing staff participants. Forty-six percent of the study participants reported lateral violence as a "very serious" or "somewhat serious" problem, and 65% reported frequently observing lateral violence behaviors among coworkers. Education and effective leadership were found to mediate oppressive and negative behaviors, whereas ineffective leadership was found to exacerbate lateral violence.