Improving Workplace Incivility by Educating Frontline Nurse Leaders: The Charge Nurse

The term workplace incivility is often replaced interchangeably with workplace bullying, horizontal/lateral violence, psychosocial harassment, intimidating behavior, and/or aggression (micro/macro). Workplace incivility in nursing has lasting effects on the profession through worsening the nursing shortage, contributing to low morale, negative working environments, safety issues for staff and patients, stress-related health problems, absenteeism, and decreased quality of patient care. Incivility can be from a variety of sources including: Nurse managers, clinical team leads, unit coordinators, physicians, patients, and other healthcare professionals. Buy-in by nursing executive leadership and evidence-based education for nurses is mandatory to address organizational incivility. The purpose of this DNP project is to equip unit nurse leaders with evidence-based practices to improve unit culture related to incivility, thereby enhancing patient outcomes, safety, and staff morale. The identified target population in this project were nurses who are training to be future charge nurses (CNs). The educational intervention facilitated enhancing future CNs’ knowledge, skills and attitudes to shift unit culture to a more civil culture through an online learning module. Data was collected in qualitative and quantitative methods. Qualitative methods involved guided online forum posts at implementation conclusion, while quantitative data involved completion of the Clark Workplace Civility Index© (CWCI). Each method demonstrated future CNs increased their self-awareness and responsiveness by enhancing their knowledge, skills and attitudes toward workplace incivility. In conclusion, the implementation of the online learning module provided effective, successful education and may help in the eradication of workplace incivility for practicing and future nurses