Horizontal Violence? Webmaster's View

Webmaster's View: Horizontal Violence---Reality or Mask?

by Melissa Franklin RN

There has been much ado about horizontal violence over the last year. According to one website, horizontal violence (known as HV) is defined as: "harmful behavior, via attitudes, actions, words, and other behaviors, that is directed towards us by another colleague. HV controls, humiliates, denigrates or injures the dignity of another. Horizontal violence indicates a lack of mutual respect and value for the worth of the individual and denies another's fundamental human rights."*

Harold Stearley, on the other hand, in his article on HV, states "The term horizontal violence applies to a different notion of confrontation - of personal attack - direct or indirect - this type of interaction does not assertively address issues - it does not address behavior - it involves personal character assassinations - it offers no solutions although it might make a few egos feel happy with having extracted their revenge."*

I agree with the latter definition. There's anger, cruelty and back-stabbing in nursing, yes. But does it qualify as HV in the manner in which HV has been implemented? If the nurse claiming HV has been perpetrated against her then abuses the supposed HV perpetrator, while self-righteously hiding behind the mask of HV, what is that? An extension of supposed HV, that's what it is. Open, honest and direct communication, without blame, shame or a self-made judgment of HV, would be a more workable, honest, less painful and considerably more productive and mature manner in which to resolve conflict, in my opinion.

The HV statement that was written by three nurses is no longer on our website. We took it off several months ago. I have seen the concept of "horizontal violence" twisted and used to justify mean, cruel and abusive behavior, as in this example: "You were horizontally violent to me, so I can say whatever I want, no matter how cruel or painful, about you or anyone else and not suffer the consequences for my own behavior, because you committed what *I* judge to be horizontal violence against me."

In other words, it serves as a mask to hide behind---a labeling behavior which gives the one who has judged she has had HV perpetrated against her open license to be abusive and cruel. I have seen it happen countless times on internet nursing lists. Hiding behind the mask of HV appears to be nothing more than a way of avoiding taking responsibility for one's own actions, responses, responsibilities and feelings. Instead, others are blamed and shamed. I now consider HV a shame and blame based, highly flawed concept that is extremely destructive to nurses' ability to resolve conflict in a mature manner in which shame and blame are not part of the equation. Nurses have been shamed and, as a result, silenced, enough---it's time to say NO to the concept of labeling other nurses as horizontally violent, for the sake of our profession! It's time for nurses to learn to work through conflict in a productive manner that shames none.

I remember well when the HV Position Statement* first came out. It looked fantastic on paper, so we obtained permission to publish it on our website. Implementation was something else again. I saw more members of lists abused by those who claimed to have had HV committed against them than I ever care to see again. In my opinion, the basic tenets of the position statement, which are excellent, have been mangled by nurses who are unwilling (or possibly unable) to take a good, hard look at their own behavior and its consequences, and choose, instead, to hide behind the presumed safety of the accusation of "horizontal violence".

*Statement by B. Blanton (my apologies to her; I suspect she never intended the statement to be used as it has), N. Spring, and C. Lybecker

*Canada Pharmacy, by H. Stearley