To identify discourses used by hospital nursing unit managers to characterize workplace bullying, and their roles and responsibilities in workplace bullying management.
Nurses around the world have ...reported being the targets of bullying. These nurses often report that their managers do not effectively help them resolve the issue. There is scant research that examines this topic from the perspective of managers.
This was a descriptive, qualitative study. Interviews were conducted with hospital nursing unit managers who were recruited via purposive and snowball sampling. Data were analyzed using Willig's Foucauldian discourse analysis.
Managers characterized bullying as an interpersonal issue involving the target and the perpetrator, as an intrapersonal issue attributable to characteristics of the perpetrator, or as an ambiguous situation. For interpersonal bullying, managers described supporting target's efforts to end bullying; for intrapersonal bullying, they described taking primary responsibility; and for ambiguous situations, they described several actions, including doing nothing.
Managers have different responses to different categories of bullying. Efforts need to be made to make sure they are correctly identifying and appropriately responding to incidents of workplace bullying.
High blood pressure is one of the most often researched, yet least understood health disparities among African Americans. This descriptive, critical discourse analysis examined how family and ...community demographics and paid and unpaid work structured participants' accounts of high blood pressure experiences in Washington State. Thirty-seven urban-dwelling African American women (n = 17) and men (n = 20) in Washington State enrolled in the study from 2000-2001. Reports about stress, concerns, worry, loneliness, and paid and unpaid work were given in semi-structured interviews. Analysis results are embedded within three major themes: (a) Aware, But Not Informed, (b) Negotiating Self, Kin and Community Health, and (c) Distant Lives, Distant Love. Knowledge of life factors influencing African Americans' high blood pressure appraisals will help develop context-specific health programs focused on their concerns.
A pragmatic view of language and a critical study of discourse can advance nursing inquiry toward the study of racism, heterosexism, classism, and health. In critical language inquiry notions about ...humans, health and illness are seen as constructed in societal discourses. Critical language inquiry challenges nurse researchers to theorize not which research questions to ask, but how to ask research questions that broaden knowledge about the interconnections among language, discourse, health, and society. Critical discourse analysis, as a methodology, can be of significant utility in exploring the relationships among health, discourse, power, and society.
Purpose: To explore how a sample of rural Louisiana residents constructed accounts about worry and stress in relationship to their high blood pressure.
Design: Qualitative study combining critical ...social theories, African American studies, and critical discourse concepts. Study participants consisted of a convenience sample (N=30) of African American women (n=15) and men (n=15) with high blood pressure.
Methods: Over a 4‐month period in 1999 a community‐based population sample was interviewed twice. Field experiences in the community and the assistance of community consultants were critical to data analysis. Based on 60 interviews, 191 passages about worry and 58 passages about stress were analyzed using discourse analysis.
Findings: Participants not only distinguished between worry and stress in their everyday lives, but they also highlighted how those concepts were interrelated. Participants' concerns about themselves as well as their children, kin, and community were emphasized in passages about worry. Stress was primarily associated with doing multiple tasks and confronting multiple prejudices in the workplace and surrounding community.
Conclusions: Participants perceived worry and stress as important health‐related concepts that affected their high blood pressure. Nursing strategies designed to address these concerns may better facilitate holistic health.
There is a need for nursing research that applies ideas gained from critical nursing scholarship, yet attends to the historical, cultural, and social context of clients analyzed through those ...frameworks. The revision of critical nursing scholarship to address multicultural perspectives on critical thought will significantly transform nursing knowledge development. This article first provides overviews about critical nursing scholarship and critical social theory. It then explores the union of critical social theory and African American studies. Ideas gained from the combination of critical social theory and African American studies are incorporated subsequently in discussions about the role of theory in representations of social identity, in the development of knowledge, and in the development of nursing research.
Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is a promising methodology for policy research in nursing. As a critical theoretical methodology, researchers use CDA to analyze social practices and language use in ...policies to examine whether such policies may promote or impede social transformation. Despite the widespread use of CDA in other disciplines such as education and sociology, nursing policy research employing CDA methodology is sparse. To advance CDA use in nursing science, it is important to outline the overall research strategies and describe the steps of CDA in policy research. This article describes, using exemplar case studies, how nursing and health policy researchers can employ CDA as a methodology. Three case studies are provided to discuss the application of CDA research methodologies in nursing policy research: (a) implementation of preconception care policies in the Zhejiang province of China, (b) formation and enactment of statewide asthma policy in Washington state of the United States, and (c) organizational implementation of employee antibullying policies in hospital systems in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Each exemplar details how CDA guided the examination of policy within specific contexts and social practices. The variations of the CDA approaches in the three exemplars demonstrated the flexibilities and potentials for conducting policy research grounded in CDA. CDA provides novel insights for nurse researchers examining health policy formation, enactment, and implementation.
Educating future registered nurses for social justice is an urgent, yet complex undertaking in undergraduate education. Although the need for social justice education is often highlighted, few ...articles describe practical teaching strategies for ensuring that undertaking. The purpose of this article is to illustrate how a curricular focus on social justice framed and supported the development of a clinical evaluation tool for undergraduate community health clinical experiences. First, social justice is defined and its relationship to baccalaureate nursing education explained. Then a description is provided of how social justice was highlighted in the vision, curriculum, and community health clinical evaluation tool of a College of Nursing. The article subsequently showcases the content and evaluation of students' journal entries about social justice. The development of the social justice component presented in this article may be useful to nurse educators striving to match theory and practice in the evaluation of social justice in students' community health experience.
Strategies to manage worry, stress and high blood pressure (HBP) are little understood from the perspective of African Americans. Using data from a qualitative research study in south Louisiana, this ...article outlines how participants with HBP managed worry and stress through the formation of family. In an exploration of 314 conversations about 'family,' African-American women were cited by both women and men as mediators of worry, stress, and HBP. Participants did not necessarily define 'family' by blood or marriage relations, unlike the way in which 'family' is presented in most HBP research. 'Family' was often discussed in terms of how relationships with others were utilized to share knowledge about HBP, to address situations that produced HBP elevation, and to marshal resources to manage HBP.
National attention is currently being directed toward assessing the association between racism as a Stressor and high blood pressure (HBP) among African Americans. Within this context, however, very ...little research is designed to elucidate the viewpoints of African Americans with HBP on this topic area. The purpose of this article is to explore, critique, and elaborate upon the study of racism as it relates to HBP research. The first portion of this paper reviews the existing literature in this field. Limitations of the current research are outlined. Insights gained as 30 African Americans with HBP talked about racism as a Stressor and how it affected their health are subsequently highlighted. Lastly, suggestions for future studies on racism and HBP are postulated.
The increasingly diverse populations served by nurse practitioners require the preparation of graduate students with special emphasis on diversity issues that affect the mental and physical health of ...the underserved and populations of color. Although initiatives to recruit and retain a multicultural student group in nursing are not new, the current need to establish a diverse work force in nursing remains urgent given the changing demography within the United States. One challenge in nursing graduate education lies in the development of innovative ways to educate students committed to working with people of color and underserved populations in the area of psychosocial health. This article presents the theoretical underpinnings of, and practical strategies for, recruitment and retention developed by the Psychosocial Nurse Practitioner training grant team, in collaboration with others at the University of Washington School of Nursing. This program, partially funded by the Division of Nursing, Bureau of Health Professions, is designed to educate future nurse practitioners to work with clients and families who have comorbid psychiatric, substance abuse, and physical conditions.
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