Violence at Work: Westside Health Systems
Maryanne Walker arrived at work relaxed and refreshed from her two-week vacation in Florida. Maryanne was director of pharmacy services at Westside Health Systems, and the first item on her calendar was a regularly scheduled total quality management meeting with the four supervisors who directly report to her. During the meeting, routine business matters and normal progress reports on projects were covered. However, Maryanne was very disturbed by what occurred at the close of the meeting.
Rhonda Carter reported that one pharmacy technician, Susan Miller, had allegedly assaulted another, Brenda Lawson, in the receiving area of the main hospital pharmacy.
Neither of the technicians reported the incident, there were no witnesses, and Rhonda learned of the altercation from another employee. Maryanne stressed her desire to be kept informed on all matters and her complete confidence in an open communication system on which total quality management was based. Maryanne asked Rhonda why she did not view the event as important enough to contact her during her vacation. Rhonda reported that the episode did not occur during her vacation but six weeks earlier. Maryanne was perplexed to find that an incident occurred six weeks ago, but was only now being brought to her attention.
Maryanne had dealt with problems of job performance but had never faced personnel problems unrelated to performance. It never occurred to her that physical fighting would be a problem in a pharmacy whose work force was predominately women. Upon returning to the office, Maryanne received the following memo from her supervisor, Nancy Smith:
"While you were away, I was made aware that Susan Miller grabbed Brenda Lawson by the shoulders, shoved her against a partition, and perhaps drew her fist back as if to hit her. I suggest that you do further research into this matter. Dependent upon the outcome of the investigation, the appropriate responses could range from ignoring the incident as hearsay or gossip to termination. This is not the way I would wish for your week to start but I really need to talk to you as soon as possible."'.
As Maryanne's boss had already learned of the incident, some action must be taken.
Attachment:- case.docx