Introduction to Social Research Methods-Free-Samples for Students

Question: Critically analyze the workplace bullying that occur in an Operating room. Answer: Introduction Workplace bullying is a repeated phenomenon in which a person experiences ill treatment from the people in the workplace, such occurrences lead to harm a person mentally and physically. There are several different types of bullying which includes physical abuse, nonverbal, verbal, psychological humiliation. Workplace bullying is different from the bullying that occur in schools. Workplace bullying occur within the established framework of rules in an organization and workplace. Studies reveal that the occurrences of bullying often occur when the person who is getting bullied is authoritatively lower than the person who is bullying. Whereas, bullying also occurs among the peers and also within the subordinates (Nielsen Einarsen, 2012). Bullying is of two types; one is overt bullying another is covert bullying. The ill effects of bullying are not restricted to the affected person, but it also affects the culture in an organization and also the work ethics among the employees. There ar e a lot of researches and studies conducted on the occurrence of bullying in an organization and also bullying occurring at the group level. These researches mainly focus on the effects and the impacts of bullying on the affected person (Samnani Singh, 2012). This study also deals with one such research journal on the workplace bullying in the operating room. The aim of the study includes critical assessment of the how the author depicted bullying in the paper, a critical discussion on the sampling techniques, the methods used during the data collection and how the data was analyzed. Background and significance The Author emphasized on the negative effects of workplace bullying as the main rationale behind the study. Workplace bullying is a repeated, totally intentional and isolated sequence of events that lead to negative impacts of the proper working environment on an organization or in a hospital. According to Branch, Ramsay Barker (2013), the workplace bullying is categorized solely as personal and work related. Certain behaviors that are considered unacceptable in the workplace include isolating, excluding and ignoring an individual, humiliating a person in front of a group of coworkers, undermining a persons integrity, using slangs against a person in a workplace, openly attacking a persons religious belief and making bad remarks upon a persons community and skin color, and even the physical abuse is considered as a workplace bullying. Along with these mentioned practices in the workplace, there are other type of bullying in the workplace which are work related, like imposing works t hat are hard to perform and have impractical deadlines, imposing tasks on an employee which are beyond the expertise of the concerned employee, also another wrong practice is taking the credits of another persons hard work, and criticizing and relieving a person from the responsibility. It is a known fact that acknowledging the workplace bullying among the nurse is a difficult part to consolidate (Berry et al., 2012), there are several studies conducted upon the workplace bullying among the nurses, however the methodologies followed in such studies is different. Hence, a comparison cannot be established within the studies. Also, the several studies conducted is based on different sampling techniques in the different healthcare environments. Studies reflect that, in a workplace the newly graduated nurses experience 20% to 32%, while in the emergency departments the incidence of bullying is around 22.9%. A study conducted among the British population of nurses, showed a remarkably hig her incidence of bullying is found to be experienced by the nurses which is around 35.8%. The data is exceptionally high among the newly graduated nurses in comparison with the nonprofessional and professional coworkers. While studies conducted among the Turkish nurses revealed that 20% of nurses reported about intentional bullying. According to Park, Cho Hong (2015), the operating room is considered as a part of the workplace in hospitals within which disruptive behaviors, interpersonal conflict, bullying behaviors and stress are common occurrences. There are several terminologies that are used to define bullying under several circumstances like lateral violence, peer incivility, disruptive behaviors, workplace incivility and horizontal violence. Study conducted among the perioperative registered nurses revealed that reveal that perioperative registered nurses behave negatively, and another issue is that often perioperative RNs criticize the work of the other employee in front of other coworkers. According to Frederick (2014), a higher incidence of workplace bullying in found in the perioperative environment. Also from the same study, the disruptive behaviors affected the work quality and increased the medical errors. Aims and objectives of the study The aims and objectives of the study are segregated into four different points. The first aim of the study is to illustrate the prevalence of workplace bullying within the perioperative registered nurses, unlicensed perioperative workers, surgical technicians at the two-different academic medical hospitals. The second aim is to investigate whether ethnicity, gender, years of profession, years of experience within a unit, and the title of the job can envision the incidence of workplace bullying. the third aim is to investigate whether there is a positive relation between the emotional exhaustion and workplace bullying within the perioperative registered nurses and staff members. The fourth aim is to investigate whether there is any relation between the workplace bullying and patient safety in the operating room (Chipps et al., 2013). Research methodology Conceptual model The Author during the conduct of the research, used a model which is based on a model developed by Hutchinson et al (2010). The model emphasizes on the presence of organizational antecedents which lets the bullying to coexist in the work environment. Organizational antecedents include several others factors which consolidate the effect of workplace bullying. These factors include unofficial organizational alliances, maltreatment of the legitimate procedures, authority and processes. Unofficial organizational alliances include the formation of groups of workers that promote an environment which is favorable for workplace bullying. Managers, who can actively control the bullying is himself engaged in the activity. While the managers are authorized to control such ill activities, are engaged in the misuse of the authority. These activities are an overall effect of the unofficial existence of informal alliances that promotes workplace bullying. According to Hutchison et al. (2010), the b ullying acts are categorized into 3 different domains: personal bullying, bullying through the works or tasks assigned, bullying on the competence and reputation. Personal bullying includes the acts of humiliation, isolation, intimidation and threats. The work-related humiliation includes hindrances in work, economic sanctions. While bullying on competence and reputation includes tarnishing the professional image and hindering the career opportunities. The activities of bullying become normal in a workplace when bullying is accepted as a friendly behavior in the work group. The consequences of bullying include unwillingness and distress during work, it makes the employees less engaged resulting in the reduction of productivity. There are other consequences which are reported by the affected individuals which include higher levels of anxiety, interruptions and depressions during the progress of career (Rodwell Demir, 2012). Study design The Author designed a cross-sectional survey. The sample size included 167 registered nurses, unlicensed perioperative workers that are working in operating room, surgical technicians at the 2 academic medical institutions. There is also an exclusion criterion which includes the employees who have worked under 6 months and the employees who work less than half percentage of work for a week. Workplace bullying was measured using a Revised- Negative Acts Questionnaire (NAQ-R) (Vogelpohl et al., 2013). the NAQ-R was developed to measure the exposure to bullying in any kind of work setting. The respondents were asked whether they experienced any bullying within the preceding 6 months by answering the 22 questions in the questionnaire. While the terms harassment and workplace bullying were not used in the questionnaire instead bullying was mentioned as negative acts. How frequent the respondents experienced the negative behavior was actually documented in the answer section, and the valid ity of the answers was determined with the Cronbach alpha score (Eisinga, Te Grotenhuis Pelzer, 2013), which ranged between 0.80 to 0.91. Emotional exhaustion was measured as part of the study through the emotional exhaustion subscale Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI). This scale measures the emotional distress during the job. The participants were further asked to answer 23 questions among which 8 questions are based on the demographic information, 8 on the bullying behaviors and the remaining 7 were based on estimating the expectations, errors and patient safety. The data accumulated from the two-different academic medical hospitals were collected and further used for data analysis. Procedure of data collection After getting the approval from both the hospitals, then the research team conveyed the data collection methodology to the perioperative nurse managers and conducted meetings with the perioperative staffs. The sole purpose is to introduce the whole procedure to the eligible participants. Before the beginning of each and every survey the research team conveyed a clear message through a cover letter depicting the aims and objectives of that particular study. There was also an option for the participants to opt out of the study by not reverting the survey. These cover letters were sent to all the eligible participants (Chipps et al., 2013). The cover letters as returned by the participants from each of the hospitals kept confidential and these surveys were treated as data sets and were later used for statistical analysis. Data analysis For the data analysis the data accumulated were entered into the IBM SPSS statistics version 19.0 software. A descriptive statistic for each of the hospital was calculated based on the demographic data. For the categorical variables, Frequencies and percentages were calculated while for the continuous variables, standard deviation and means were calculated. The data collected through the NAQ-R were analyzed for the calculation of intensity, frequency as well as target scores. the frequency of workplace bullying is calculated by the adding the negative acts which are experienced by the participants on a daily or weekly basis. The Author considered the participants as targets of bullying when the participants experienced bullying or the negative acts twice of more than twice daily or weekly. A logistic regression model is used in order to determine that the demographic variables have a positive correlation with the target status (Allison, 2012). The target status is defined as no means zero whereas yes means one. The independent variables involve the individual demography of both the hospitals, registered nurses and the non-registered nurses, age, experience of the employees in terms of year in the medical unit, and ethnicity. In a similar fashion the author designed multiple regression model in order to determine that the demographic variables are signifying the intensity of bullying. the continuous bullying intensity is considered as a dependent variable while the other demographic variables were considered as independent variables. The author utilized the spearmans rank correlation coefficient to establish a relationship between emotional exhaustion and the participants experiencing the workplace bullying (Zionts, 2012). a logistic model is also developed which signifies which bullying tendencies resulted in to compromising the patient safety. Within this model, the dependent variable included the compromise of patient safety as no and yes responses with value s of zero and one respectively. Also, each of the negative responses from the NAQ-R is entered separately into the regression model. Critical assessment According to the author, workplace bullying is a repeated, totally intentional and isolated sequence of events that lead to negative impacts of the proper working environment on an organization or in a hospital. Workplace bullying is major problem which is occurring among the perioperative Registered nurses, unlicensed perioperative workers and surgical technicians in the operating rooms (OR). While the survey conducted did not have the words like bullying and harassment in the questionnaire, instead these words are substituted as negative acts. Bullying was measured or quantified based on the common demographic variables like the gender, ethnicity and age. The quantification was also based on other important factors like the years of profession and experience, years of experience in the particular medical unit, title of the job and the job role. While the study was completely based in the operating room of a hospital environment. It neglected the general occurrence of workplace envi ronment n the other types of working environment (Power et al., 2013). The study emphasized on the occurrences of bullying in the operating rooms which can be considered as a micro environment. Although the other aspects of bullying that occur within the other medical units and department of a hospital are not accounted and dealt. Thus, it can be said that although the studies related to bullying in the operating rooms were very minimal, and this particular gave a detailed and descriptive analysis. Yet it failed to highlight the other instances of bullying in different circumstances that arise due to medical emergencies in other units (Gokhman et al., 2012). The sampling process is kept confidential by delivering the cover letter to each of the participants through mail. The participants were employees from two different hospitals which included the perioperative nurses, surgical technicians and the unlicensed perioperative workers. It is important to mention that along with the above-mentioned personnel in the operating rooms, there are other personnel who have a contributory effect on the operating room environment. Like the scrub nurse, anesthesiologist, circulating nurse (Russ et al., 2013). These personnel are not taken in to account during the study, which somewhat decreases the effectivity of the study. The data collection methods were majorly based on the survey conducted through questionnaires that are based on the negative acts experienced by the participants. The study even has the option for the participants to opt out from the study process by not submitting the survey. This somewhat makes the sampling method lose its grip from the effective sampling size. The questions framed lacked the flexibility of expression. Other sampling methods like undisclosed interviews with the affected personnel can effectively highlight the exact cause of work place bullying. The analysis of the data is completely based on statistics and because it did not take into account of other sampling techniques like interviews (Rowley, 2012). Thus, the results reflected data based on the negative acts experienced by the respondents on a daily and weekly basis. Although the study has its drawbacks which are discussed above, the study does have strengths. The first major strength is that study on workplace bullying in operating room is not a well-researched field and not enough studies were done before. This particular study highlighted and revealed a lot of hidden aspects of workplace bullying in the operating room. The second major strength is that the workplace bulling not only affects the targeted person but it also has an equally negative impact on the patient health outcomes including the patient safety, mortality, satisfaction and as well as negative patient events (Laschinger, 2014). Conclusion Therefore, from the above study it can be concluded that workplace bulling is an unpleasant phenomenon that occurs within the workplace and work groups. The negative impacts of workplace bullying not only affects a targeted person mentally but also physically which hampers his or her productivity. Whereas, such occurrences in a medical unit can have serious impact on the health outcomes of the patients. The study focusses on the workplace bullying in operating room and it presented with a detailed an exhaustive analysis of the results. However, it failed to take into account the other personnel like scrub nurse, circulating nurse and anesthesiologist that work in an operating room. 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