The purpose of this paper was to explore nursing students' perceptions of horizontal violence and determine how those perceptions could potentially influence their future career choices. Orlando's Deliberative Nursing Process (1990) was used as the conceptual framework. This paper builds upon the work completed by Curtis, Bowen, and Reid (2007) by utilizing a modification of the original questionnaire. The modification allowed for the addition of quantitative analysis to compare different levels of students in the nursing program. The results were also qualitatively analyzed to determine if they followed the themes that emerged in the original work.

The following themes emerged: (1) Humiliation and Lack of Respect; (2) Powerlessness and Becoming Invisible; (3) Coping Strategies; (4) Hierarchical Nature of Horizontal Violence (including a subset ADN vs. BSN); (5) Future Employment Choices; (6) The Negative Impact on the Image of Nursing.

These qualitative results match the original work with the exception of a new theme related to how horizontal violence impacts the image of nursing. The quantitative results suggest that experiences of horizontal violence increase for the students as the level in program increases. The quantitative results indicated no differences in how future employment choices would be affected in each group.