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Assignment questions
NursingDiscussion postNursing leadership

NURS 6221 Week 8: identity abrasions at work

The brief tells you to answer from the position of the person who feels wronged, not from the manager's chair. That instruction is the assignment, and reversing it is the most common way this post goes wrong.

Editorial process

Last reviewed · August 15, 2026

01

What makes an abrasion an identity abrasion

One sentence in this brief governs the whole post: approach each vignette from the perspective of the individual who feels wronged and what that individual may need in terms of resolution. Most responses ignore it and write from the executive's chair, describing what policy they would apply and what training they would mandate. That is the wrong seat, and the difference is visible in the first paragraph. The term identity abrasion is doing specific work too. It names the friction that arises when someone's gender, ethnicity, religion or orientation is implicated in a workplace interaction — often without intent, frequently invisible to the person who caused it, and cumulative in a way a single incident report cannot capture, because each occurrence is small enough to seem unworthy of one. That last property is why the individual's account matters more than the incident's severity, and why a severity threshold would miss the phenomenon entirely.

Write the post in two movements. First, from inside the vignette: what the employee experienced, why it landed the way it did, and what they would actually need — acknowledgement, a change in the behaviour, a private conversation rather than a public process, assurance that raising it will not cost them. Only then step into the executive role and ask what response meets that need without escalating in ways the employee did not ask for. The brief also names four organisational consequences — performance, morale, retention and competitive advantage — so treat them as required content rather than background, and connect at least one to something measurable such as turnover cost or time to fill a vacancy. Close on the executive's structural obligation, since a response that resolves one incident and leaves the conditions intact has not done the job, however satisfactorily the individual case was closed.

Likely learning objectives

Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.

  • 01
    Analyse a workplace conflict from the perspective of the person who experienced it.
  • 02
    Define identity abrasion and distinguish it from ordinary workplace disagreement.
  • 03
    Connect an individual incident to measurable organisational outcomes.
Assignment instructionsQuoted verbatim

Read the full question

Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.

NURS6221 Managing Human Resources Week 8 Discussion Differences at Work and “Identity Abrasions” A more diverse workforce can create abrasive interactions that require your attention as a nurse executive. Miscommunication, misunderstanding, or entrenched and antiquated attitudes and beliefs may result in situations where one employee is offended, perhaps deeply, by others. These “identity abrasions” that occur when ideas and attitudes clash naturally vary but relate most typically to gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and other defining qualities of individuals. This Discussion provides examples of conflict situations and offers an opportunity to consider how you would respond as a nurse executive. Given understanding and empathy are key in supporting employees, approach each vignette from the perspective of the individual who feels wronged and what that individual may need in terms of resolution. To Prepare: Review the Learning Resources on diversity and inclusion in healthcare organizations. Your Instructor will identify three “Differences at Work” vignettes as the focus of this Discussion. Read the three case studies and choose one as the subject of your Discussion post. Identify the issues in your chosen case study and reflect on how a diversity and inclusion perspective might mitigate, address, or contribute to the concept of “identity abrasion” in the workplace. Consider how this situation might affect organizational performance, staff morale and retention, and/or competitive advantage. Consider how you would respond if you were the employee in your chosen vignette and what kind of support and resolutions you might seek, or what you would recommend to this individual in terms of responses. By Day 3 of Week 8 Post the following: Briefly describe the case study you selected, and explain the elements of “identity abrasion” in the employee’s experience. From the position of the employee, describe what actions and strategies would be most welcome and effective for resolving this conflict situation. Support your post with Learning Resources or current literature. Discussion and provides examples of conflict situations and offers an opportunity to consider how you would respond as a nurse executive NURS6221 Read a selection of your colleagues’ responses. By Day 6 of Week 1 Respond to at least two of your colleagues on two different days, preferably one colleague who selected the same case study and one who selected a different case study. For a colleague with the same case study, compare your understanding and analysis of the situation and expand on or propose different strategies or actions for responding to the employee’s experience. For colleague(s) with different case studies, explain your questions or insights on the case study from the colleague’s description and suggest additional or alternative responses. Support your ideas with Learning Resources or current literature. Note: For this Discussion, you are required to complete your initial post before you will be able to view and respond to your colleagues’ postings. Begin by clicking on the Post to Discussion Question link, and then select Create Thread to complete your initial post. Remember, once you click on Submit, you cannot delete or edit your own posts, and you cannot post anonymously. Please check your post carefully before clicking on Submit!.
02

Turn the brief into deliverables

  1. 01
    A brief description of the selected case study.
  2. 02
    An explanation of the identity abrasion elements in the employee's experience.
  3. 03
    Actions and strategies described from the employee's position.
  4. 04
    Discussion of performance, morale, retention and competitive advantage, with APA citations.
03

The employee's view first, then the executive's response

01

Describe the vignette briefly

Summarise the selected case in a few sentences so the analysis has a subject.

02

Name the abrasion elements

Identify what aspect of identity was implicated and why the interaction registered as it did.

03

Answer from the employee's position

State what this person would actually want to happen, including what they would not want.

04

Connect to organisational outcomes

Link the situation to performance, morale, retention and competitive advantage, with at least one measure.

05

State the executive's structural obligation

Say what must change beyond this incident so the conditions do not reproduce it.

04

Evidence on inclusion and organisational performance

Recommended databases

  • Your week's Learning Resources on diversity and inclusion
  • CINAHL
  • Harvard Business Review
  • PubMed Central
  • American Organization for Nursing Leadership

Search sequence

  1. 1.
    Start with the assigned Learning Resources — the vignettes and the concept both come from them.
  2. 2.
    Search for nurse turnover cost figures, which is the easiest of the four outcomes to quantify credibly.
  3. 3.
    Look for literature on psychological safety, which supplies the structural half of the answer.
  4. 4.
    Prefer sources within five years; workforce diversity data ages quickly.
05

Reference shortlist

These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.

Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.

  1. 01

    About CAHPS

    Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality · 2024

    Shows how experience data is collected and reported, which is the mechanism by which staff and patient perceptions become organisational evidence.

  2. 02

    About Adverse Childhood Experiences

    Centers for Disease Control and Prevention · 2024

    The public-health framing of cumulative adversity, useful wherever a case asks you to connect an individual's history to a population-level pattern.

  3. 03

    The association between perceived electronic health record usability and professional burnout among US nurses

    Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 28(8), 1632-1441 · 2021

    A worked example of measuring how workplace conditions drive nurse burnout and intent to leave, which is the retention argument in quantified form.

  4. 04

    Expanding knowledge and roles for authority and practice boundaries of Emergency Department nurses: a grounded theory study

    International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being · 2019

    Qualitative evidence on how nurses negotiate authority and role friction, close to the mechanism this discussion is about.

06

Review before submission

Common mistakes

  • Writing from the executive's perspective when the brief explicitly asks for the employee's.
  • Treating the incident as a one-off rather than as cumulative friction.
  • Proposing a formal investigation the employee never asked for and may fear.
  • Naming the four organisational outcomes without connecting any to a measure.

Submission checklist

  • Is the first half genuinely written from the employee's position?
  • Have you defined identity abrasion rather than assuming the term?
  • Are all four named organisational consequences addressed?
  • Is at least one consequence tied to something measurable?

Use this guide to plan and review your own work. Follow your institution's rules and read our academic-integrity policy.

Written by

Aaron Bishop

MA, Education

assignment interpretation and research-methods coaching across disciplines

Aaron leads the EssayCrackers editorial desk. He works on how assignment briefs are read — what a rubric is actually asking for, and where students most often answer a different question than the one set.

Reviewed by

Dr. Nathan Cole

PhD, Rhetoric & Composition

Argumentation and thesis development

Nathan teaches first-year composition and directs a university writing center. He reviews EssayCrackers guides for argumentative soundness and citation accuracy.

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