JoNeil Smith Conley

JoNeil Smith Conley has been in nursing for 44 years and has many academic accomplishments. The roles that JoNeil has held include bedside nurse, leader and consultant. She spent years researching nurse bullying within organizations and has great insight into the issue. She also developed a tool to decipher bullying from other negative styles of communication.

“It is not the nurse’s job to fix the bully. That’s administration’s job,” she says. JoNeil works with organizations to teach them how to work with bullies in healthcare and improve the culture of the hostile work environment. Her tip for nurses is for them to know their organization’s code of conduct – everyone should have an understanding of their employer’s expectations for behavior.

Nurse bullying can create toxic work environments and stress that ultimately leads to less than optimal patient care. Nurses suffer and often end up with symptoms of burnout. JoNeil helps those individuals gain courage to break free from the bullying behavior and deal with difficult individuals. If you work in a toxic work environment or are dealing with a nurse bully at work, reach out to JoNeil so you can live a more joyful life!

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About JoNeil

As an OR Nurse, Dr. Conley faced bullying by her preceptor, other nurses, and surgeons. Over the course of her career, she experienced and witnessed the negative impact of bullying on nurses’ emotional and physical well-being. The data from Dr. Conley’s doctoral study, Bullying in the Perioperative Nursing Workplace, supported the correlation between bullying acts and negative patient outcomes – including the death of healthy patients.

Dr. Conley has taken her experience and made it her passion. She is on a mission to work with nurses and organizations to change the consequences and outcomes from bullying in healthcare. Her expertise, practical tools, and strategies include implementing The Meanness Matrix and “How to Chart Bullying So Your Voice Is Heard.”

While Sr. Director of Talent Development for the Advisory Board Company, she worked with over 300 healthcare organizations, training and empowering staff and leaders in subjects such as disruptive behavior, conflict resolution, self-care, teamwork, negotiations, and many others. She has recently opened the Miss JoNeil’s School of Bullyology and Toxicity Taming. Students are currently being enrolled for Bullyology 101, which begins November 29th, 2021.

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