Nurses’ perception toward workplace bullying and its relation to work burnout

Abstract

Background Workplace bullying is a social and organizational problem within the health care organizations systems, it has several adverse effects and is closely associated with nurses’ work burnout. Bullying and burnout have the potential to negatively influence staff nurses both at their work and in their everyday lives. Aim The current study aimed to explore staff nurses’ perception toward workplace bullying and its relation to their work burnout at Beni Suef University Hospital. Research design A descriptive correlational design was used in the study. Setting The study was conducted at Beni Suef University Hospital. Sample A Convenience sample (n=250) of staff nurses who accepted to participate in the study. Tools Two tools were utilized to collect data: 1) the workplace bullying scale; 2) the work burnout scale. Results The results of the present study showed that the majority (80.99%) of the staff nurses were highly perceived of workplace bullying, and the majority (86.75%) of them were victims of work-related bullying, with more than two −third (69.6%) of them perceived that they sometimes had exposed to an unmanageable workload and more than half (52.4%) of them sometimes had exposed to excessive monitoring of their work. Also, the results indicated that the majority (72.56%) of staff nurses had highly perceived work burnout, with the 20.61±4.18 majority (76.41%) of them were victims of work-related- burnout, with more than two −third (62.8%) of them perceived that they always feel used up at the end of the workday and there was a highly statistically significant positive correlation between all domains of workplace bullying and work burnout. Conclusion The study findings concluded that staff nurses highly perceived of work place bullying and work burnout and there was a statistically highly significant positive correlation between staff nurses perception of work place bullying and their work burnout. Recommendations The administrators and supervisors should enhance healthy work environment which involved with justice, fairness, developing positive work culture that requires effective communication and respect between staff and others, develop internal formal procedure for reporting and investigating bullying and develop training programs for workplace bullying concept and management and encourage nurses to report incidents of bullying.