New graduate nurses may face many fears starting their first job as a RN.

The term Lateral violence or horizontal violence may never cross the minds of the fearful new nurses. Griffin (2004) placed 26 new nurses from a large tertiary hospital placed into a Exploratory design study with an applied intervention, to understand how and if Lateral violence in the practice of nursing could be controlled to allow newly Registered nurses the opportunity to acquire practice knowledge and skills without the barrier of lateral violence interfering. They were provided small laminated cueing cards with written visual for the appropriate responses to the most common forms of lateral violence. (p. 259-260) The same 26 participants were than videotaped a year later incorporating the cue cards and the response to lateral violence. Having the nurses pre-exposed to these conditions, made them aware and helped them identify lateral violence (Griffin, 2004). The behavioral intervention in this study positively influenced changes in actions of laterally violent nurses. Understanding how nurses practice lateral violence allowed the newly registered nurses to view the behavior in a different context, which may have kept them vested in their personal learning needs (Griffin, 2004).

Targeting lateral violence and its effects on newly licensed nurses, had a positive outcome in the study Teaching Cognitive Rehearsal as a Shield for Lateral Violence: An Intervention for Newly Licensed Nurses. Looking at the nurses that do not fit in the newly licensed category what might be the next step in helping to improve and or eliminate lateral violence? A recent study completed in 2007 by Barrett, Piatek, Korber, and Padula, titled Lessons Learned From a Lateral Violence and Team-Building Intervention, studied RNs from four departments within a Magnet-accredited facility with the purpose of to identify and improve nurse satisfaction and group cohesion through team-building interventions and team functioning Barrett et. all (2009). While the qualitative method looked at the impact of the intervention overall a groups dynamic and processes on the units (Barrett et. all). The team building intervention was conducted separately with similarities in structure, recognizing the needs and issues of each department.