The Incivility is Unacceptable!

Essential competencies—such as effective, efficient communication and collaboration among interprofessional health care teams—have been cited by the Institute of Medicine and others as lacking in many new graduate nurses.

Preparing new nurses for practice requires dedicated and coordinated responses from academic and practice organizations. Professional skills are similar to clinical skills; both can be learned and improved upon over time using strategies and appropriate role modeling.

By understanding shared responsibilities and building effective teams, faculty, clinicians and students can collaborate to instill professionalism and build healthy work environments.

Rather than feeling mentored and nurtured, many students report feeling unwelcome in the clinical environment, which leads to isolation, emotional distress, depression and fear about their career future.

Unhealthy work environments pose a threat to nursing student learning, new graduate transition, job satisfaction, employee retention, professional development and patient safety.

We stand little chance of breaking the chain of workplace incivility if the next generation of nurses believes this type of behavior is acceptable. Reasons behind our current dilemma are multifaceted, and everyone—clinical faculty, nurse managers, staff nurses and students—plays a role.

When clinical faculty and clinicians use the form, storm, norm, perform, adjourn method of team formation, they can collaborate to create a partnership built on professional standards and a shared vision, while teaching students professionalism.