Featured Colleagues

As an experienced researcher and a consultant in the field of fostering civility in academic and practice settings, I realize the value of collaborating with other experts to bring audiences the latest state of the science. Lynda Olender and Dr. Eric Landrum are this month’s “Featured Colleagues.” Lynda Olender, an extraordinary and unique nurse leader whose vision is to foster ‘Cultures of Regard’ in the practice environment. Lynda and I are currently collaborating on a research study to highlight ways that nursing practice and education can work together to foster civility in the greater nursing community. I also have the honor of featuring Dr. Landrum. Eric and I have developed the Organizational Civility Scale (OCS) which measures civility and incivility in health care settings and the factors that may contribute to it. Eric is an exceptional, first-rate, and gifted scholar. I am truly honored and privileged to work with both of these illustrious colleagues.

Lynda Olender, PhDc, ANP, NEA-BC, RN
What would it take to make the bedside the environment of choice for nurses? Increasing evidence suggests that the relationship between the nurse and his or her manager and between co-workers predicts the intent to leave or to stay at the bedside. Moreover, high turnover rates particularly within newly graduated nurses suggest we could be more purposeful and intentional about creating an environment where civility is the norm and the establishment of a Culture of Regard, a realistic and reachable goal.

Lynda Olender This past year, Ms. Olender has authored two articles addressing the aforementioned passion: One entitled, “Reversing a Bullying Culture”, and the second entitled, “Establishing a Culture of Regard: The Antidote to Workplace Bullying.” Additionally, her dissertation interest currently underway is to assess whether a relationship exists between the caring behaviors of Nurse Managers (informed by Watsons ‘theory of human caring) and the staff nurses’ perceptions of exposure to workplace bullying.

Ms. Olender’s experience encompasses both clinical and administrative expertise within a large metropolitan acute care facility. Additionally, she has had ten years of experience as faculty member within the Division of Nursing at a prestigious university in NYC. Dr. Clark and Ms. Olender have synergized their interests to build a seamless approach to the transference of civility from the academic environment to the clinical arena. To that end, they are currently engaged in a joint initiative to publish a paper on the partnership between nursing practice and education to address incivility/civility throughout the nursing community.

Eric Landrum

Dr. Eric Landrum, Ph.D.
My training is in experimental psychology specializing in cognitive psychology, with an emphasis in quantitative methods. My own lines of research frequently involve the development and testing of new scales of measurement, including topics that are relevant to higher education and career pursuits. It is the important work of Cindy Clark that has captured my interest in collaboration to measure civility which is applicable to multiple health care settings. A famous psychologist once said “what exists, exists in some amount.” It is essential that a valid and reliable measure of civility be established, because this allows for the systematic assessment of work environments that (a) exhibit high levels of civility, serving as best practices, or (b) could be toxic, indicating the need for intervention before patients and health care employees are affected. Cindy’s work in the measurement of civility is ground-breaking work, and I’m honored to play a role in the process.