Aggression from Patients or Next of Kin and Exposure to Bullying Behaviors: A Conglomerate Experience?

Abstract

Although workplace violence and aggression have been identified as important stressors in the nursing profession, studies simultaneously comparing patient-initiated aggression and exposure to bullying behaviors at work are rather scarce. The aim of this study was to compare aggression from patients or next of kin and exposure to bullying behaviors in terms of prevalence, health-related quality of life outcomes, and potential overlap in those targeted. In the period of 2008-2009, data were collected among 2059 members of the Norwegian Nurses Organization. Latent class (LC) analysis and a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) were used to investigate the proposed relationships. The results showed that aggression from patients or next of kin and exposure to bullying behaviors were perceived as separate and independent stressors. Although aggression from patients or next of kin was more frequent than workplace bullying, the latter was the only significant stressor related to health-related quality of life in terms of reduced mental health functioning. Although being a rather infrequent experience, exposure to bullying behaviors seems to have more severe health-related outcomes for nurses than aggression from patients or next of kin. Hence, the results of the study strengthen previous findings and suggest that managers must aim to maintain a positive psychosocial work environment with zero-tolerance for bullying.

Workplace Violence in Healthcare: A Single-Center Study on Causes, Consequences and Prevention Strategies

“…Antão HS, et al Workplace violence in healthcare, Acta Med Port 2020 Jan;33(1): [31][32][33][34][35][36][37] cognitive activation that can be described as worrying or having repetitive thoughts, triggering autonomic arousal and emotional stress. 4 Length of exposure has been referred as determinant to the severity of these effects. 4,5 The impact of workplace violence on health is of greater concern when workers are permanently involved with other citizens which is the case of healthcare, 3 where the risk of aggression is four times higher than in the general private sector.…”

“…4 Length of exposure has been referred as determinant to the severity of these effects. 4,5 The impact of workplace violence on health is of greater concern when workers are permanently involved with other citizens which is the case of healthcare, 3 where the risk of aggression is four times higher than in the general private sector. 6 Additionally, it threatens the quality of the care provided to patients.…”

Measuring bullying at work with the short-negative acts questionnaire: identification of targets and criterion validity

“…In some studies, these indicators had low factor loadings (Einarsen et al, 2009), even beneath a threshold of .3 (Giorgi, Arenas, & Leon-Perez, 2011). Also, studies employing Latent Class (LC) Analysis to deal with the highly skewed distributions of negative acts have found that, on the one hand, targets of workplace bullying hardly reported acts of physical aggression, while on the other hand, targets of physical aggression rarely reported bullying behaviours (Einarsen et al, 2009;Leon-Perez et al, 2014;Reknes et al, 2017).…”

Ti år med SUSSH: Skiftarbeid, søvn og helse blant norske sykepleiere

“…I 2017 ble det publisert fire nye vitenskapelige artikler fra SUSSH i internasjonale tidsskrifter (35)(36)(37)(38). Tematikken i disse omfatter livsstilsfaktorer, arbeidsnarkomani, sykefravaer og mobbing, alle i sammenheng med arbeidstid.…”

“…Konklusjonen fra denne studien er at selv om mobbing på arbeidsplassen inntreffer relativt sjelden, vil det ha en betydelig negativ innvirkning på sykepleiernes helse, en innvirkning som er sterkere enn det å bli utsatt for aggresjon fra pasienter og pårørende. Helseledere bør ha som mål å skape og sikre et positivt arbeidsmiljø med nulltoleranse for mobbing (37).…”