Workplace bullying, biased behaviours and performance review in the nursing profession: A qualitative study

Abstract

Aims and objectives To explore staff nurses’ discourses of workplace bullying, to critically examine how these discourses affect their responses to bullying. Background Workplace bullying has been identified as a pervasive problem within the nursing profession. Efforts to eradicate workplace bullying need to involve staff—targets as well as bystanders. By understanding how this population conceptualises workplace bullying, more effective and targeted solutions to the problem can be devised. Design This qualitative study used a critical discourse analysis method which was based on the work of Foucault. Methods Thirteen staff nurses who worked in a variety of settings in the USA were interviewed. COREQ checklist was used for this article. Results Three interrelated discursive strands were identified: “biased behaviour manifested as workplace bullying, workplace bullying disguised as performance review and workplace bullying as entrenched behaviour in nursing”. Actions in response to bullying varied according to which discursive strand was invoked. Conclusions The central theme at the intersection of the discursive strands was that workplace bullying is a mechanism for driving out nurses who are different. Relevance to clinical practice Efforts to address workplace bullying among nurses need to include training on legitimate methods of performance review, workshops on how to interact with diverse co‐workers, and examination of how practices with nursing education contribute to the perpetuation of bullying in clinical settings.

“It’s Not Us, It’s You!”: Extending Managerial Control through Coercion and Internalisation in the Context of Workplace Bullying amongst Nurses in Ireland

“…This reframing of the problem by management occurred through the creation of a discourse that placed employee resistance as professional incompetence, thus linking the narrative to professional identity and performance management [76]. This has been observed in other studies with regard to employee resistive actions to bullying [77,78] but the scale of this was notable in this study. Furthermore, it is interesting that the reframing brought the issue into the realm of individual performance management and assessment.…”

Predictors of moral harassment in nursing work in critical care units

“…Thus, early identification in the professional practice environment can offer subsidies to health service managers for the development of prevention and control programs of this behavior in health institutions (6) . Efforts to combat bullying at work among nurses and staff need to include training in legitimate methods of performance analysis, workshops on how to interact with various co-workers, and examining how nursing teaching practices contribute to the perpetuation of bullying in clinical settings (9) .…”

“…It is, therefore, a phenomenon that has been present for many years in nursing work environments and that has plagued the health of professionals worldwide, often veiled or remaining only as an index for situational diagnosis (1,9) .…”

Prevalence and Consequences of Verbal Aggression among Bank Workers: A Survey into an Italian Banking Institution

“…However, Jeong and Kim's (2018) study showed that emotion-oriented strategy was one of the factors related to the intention to leave the workplace. Seeking peer support could be a strategy to express negative feelings and obtain support, but it could not change the negative context in which the phenomenon occurred because they did not know how to intervene (Johnson 2019). This creates a climate of frustration that affects the entire organization: previous research has shown that witnesses to workplace aggression perceived more stress and had more mental health problems than nonwitnesses (Sprigg et al 2019;Acquadro Maran et al 2021).…”