A conversation on cancel culture, featuring former ACLU President Nadine Strossen

Flyer from the Feb. 22 event

On February 22nd, I had the privilege of participating in a “A Conversation on Cancel Culture,” featuring former ACLU president and law professor Nadine Strossen (New York Law School). The event was sponsored by the Suffolk University Law School chapter of the Federalist Society.

My main role was to engage Professor Strossen, a preeminent authority on free speech and civil liberties, in a wide-ranging conversation about cancel culture, as well as to provide some of my own points about cancel culture in the workplace. Thanks largely to Nadine’s thought-provoking insights, I believe that the program succeeded very well at exploring the parameters of cancel culture and its legal and social implications. 

If you’d like to watch a video recording of the program (approx. 90 minutes, including Q&A) without charge, then you may access it here. 

I’m grateful to my school’s Federalist Society chapter for extending this invitation. Both Nadine and I hold social and political views that, on balance, veer to the left of the Federalist Society, which is widely regarded as the nation’s leading legal organization favoring conservative law and policy positions. The Suffolk Law chapter contributed to a constructive dialogue about a contentious topic by offering its stage to us.

It was also a pleasure to welcome Nadine to Suffolk. Nadine began her law teaching career as a supervising professor in the Civil Rights Clinic at New York University School of Law. During her first year at NYU, among her students was a callow young man from northwest Indiana who benefited greatly from her instruction. Her ferocious intelligence, naturally friendly and supportive nature, and commitment to making a difference stood out immediately. During the years that followed, it was such a delight to see her star deservedly rise.

I’m working on a post specifically about cancel culture in employment settings, building on my remarks at this event. In the meantime, if you’d like to listen to a leading free speech expert in Nadine Strossen explore cancel culture generally, then please watch our conversation.

Bullying, mobbing, and incivility in the healthcare workplace

On Wednesday, I discussed bullying, mobbing, and incivility in healthcare workplaces at a Grand Rounds session hosted by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health, in New York City. It was a welcomed opportunity to discuss the challenges of the current healthcare work environment with physicians and other professionals.

Grand Rounds are a form of continuing professional education for those who work in healthcare settings. Sessions typically feature a presentation plus Q&A. Although many Grand Rounds presenters are experts in specific areas of healthcare practice and delivery, at times folks from related fields are invited to present.

When I first became involved with anti-bullying work in the late 1990s, it soon became evident that many healthcare workplaces were sites of significant bullying and related behaviors. I first started hearing accounts of bullying from nurses. Then came the stories from physicians, residents, and medical students. These streams of reports have remained consistent over the years.

Fortunately, some positive signs have appeared as well, at least at the bird’s eye level. Here in the U.S., two significant professional bodies — the Joint Commission and the American Medical Association — have now weighed in strongly against bullying-type behaviors.

The Joint Commission

In 2008 (modified and reaffirmed in 2021), the Joint Commission — an independent, non-profit organization that accredits health care organizations and programs — issued a standard on intimidating and disruptive behaviors at work, citing concerns about patient care (link here):

Intimidating and disruptive behaviors can foster medical errors, contribute to poor patient satisfaction and to preventable adverse outcomes, increase the cost of care, and cause qualified clinicians, administrators and managers to seek new positions in more professional environments. Safety and quality of patient care is dependent on teamwork, communication, and a collaborative work environment. To assure quality and to promote a culture of safety, health care organizations must address the problem of behaviors that threaten the performance of the health care team.

As you can see, the Joint Commission’s primary focus was on how bullying-type behaviors can have a negative impact on patient care.

American Medical Association

More recently, the American Medical Association — the largest national association representing the interests of doctors and other healthcare stakeholders — has issued statements, reports, and training materials covering bullying and related behaviors. The AMA defines workplace bullying as (link here):

…repeated, emotionally or physically abusive, disrespectful, disruptive, inappropriate, insulting, intimidating, and/or threatening behavior targeted at a specific individual or a group of individuals that manifests from a real or perceived power imbalance and is often, but not always, intended to control, embarrass, undermine, threaten, or otherwise harm the target.

These 2020 developments are shared on the AMA website (link here):

• “‘Bullying in the workplace is a complex type of unprofessional conduct. Bullying in medicine happens as a result of a combination of individual, organizational and systemic issues,’ says an AMA Board of Trustees Report on the topic. ‘The first line of defense against this destructive behavior are physicians, residents and medical students. There is no justification for bullying, disrespect, harassment, intimidation, threats or violence of any kind to occur among professionals whose primary purpose is to heal. Physicians choose medicine as their life’s work for many reasons, one of the most important being their desire to help and care for people.'”
• The AMA House of Delegates “adopted guidelines for the establishment of workplace policies to prevent and address bullying in the practice of medicine, saying that ‘health care organizations, including academic medical centers, should establish policies to prevent and address bullying in their workplaces.'”

In 2021, the AMA published a short training guide, Bullying in the Health Care Workplace: A Guide to Prevention and Mitigation, which can be accessed here.

My Advice

I closed my prepared remarks with recommendations on how healthcare institutions can address bullying behaviors, adapting them from a recently published piece on bullying in the legal profession, written for the American Bar Association:

• “Understand that health care professionals have not necessarily been trained to work well with others. Some may not grasp the distinctions between assertive, aggressive, and abusive behaviors.”
• “Include all stakeholders, recognizing that bullying can be vertical (typically top-down) and horizontal/lateral (peer(s) to peer(s)).”
• “For healthcare employers, start at onboarding and orientation, messaging to new hires that everyone should be treated with dignity and respect.”
• “Include bullying in employee handbooks and employee training programs, per AMA recommendations.”
• “Use climate surveys and 360 feedback mechanisms to help identify problems concerning bullying and related behaviors. Don’t sweep bad reports under the rug.”
• “Consider coaching, counseling, and – if necessary – termination for abusive individuals, even if they are proficient in other areas of their performance.”
• “Medical and nursing schools should include bullying and incivility in their curricula.”
• “Especially during the pandemic, incivility and bullying behaviors from patients and their families should be part of education, training, and institutional responses.”

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As I noted during my presentation, all the best practices and policies aren’t worth a thing if they are not implemented and followed with good intentions. But the fact that national healthcare associations are recognizing the harms caused by bullying behaviors to workers and patients alike is encouraging.

The Mount Sinai event attracted a strong turnout, and I received very positive feedback on the session from the program organizers. As I said to those who attended, I am especially grateful to all healthcare providers during this pandemic. I hope that they found the hour we spent together useful and interesting.

Sharing insights about workplace bullying and mobbing in SafeHarbor, Part III

This year, I’ve been writing about my visits to SafeHarbor (link here), the online site created by Dr. Gary Namie, co-founder of the Workplace Bullying Institute, to serve as “a community dedicated to the people affected by workplace bullying and those devoted to helping them.” I’ve also shared some past blog articles that I’ve posted for SafeHarbor members.

During my visit to SafeHarbor this evening, it struck me how a combination of knowledge, understanding, and — yes — technology has brought us to where a site like this can exist and sustain. Members can start discussions, comment on existing threads, and link articles, thereby contributing to an educative and supportive dynamic that can overcome distance and physical separation.

When I joined forces with Gary and Ruth Namie in the late 1990s, the internet was still in its infancy, with the first generation of online discussion boards offering a glimpse of what might come. While I have very mixed feelings about the omnipresence of digital technology in our lives, I am glad that we can harness it for good purposes such as this one.

Once again, here are more past blog articles that I’ve posted to SafeHarbor:

• Not “Set for Life”: Boomers facing layoffs, discrimination, and bullying at work (2012) (link here)
• Are calls for resilience and “grit” an indirect form of victim shaming & blaming? (2016, rev. 2019 & 2022) (link here)
• Typing your workplace culture (2009; rev. 2022) (link here)
• Music as therapy (2021) (link here)
• On the social responsibilities of writers (2019) (link here)
• Myths and realities about working in the non-profit sector (2014) (link here)
• Let’s follow an Eightfold Path to psychologically healthy workplaces (2019) (link here)
• Dealing with “gatekeepers” at work: Beware of Dr. No (2011; rev. 2020) (link here)
• “How can I make a living doing workplace anti-bullying work?” (2019) (link here)
• Five signs of the eliminationist instinct in today’s workplaces (2015) (link here)