Bullying in Undergraduate Clinical Nursing Education

Abstract

Although a limited number of studies have focused on bullying in nursing education to date, all of those studies demonstrate the existence of bullying in clinical settings, where nursing students undertake a significant amount of their nursing education. The purpose of this study was to examine the state of bullying in clinical nursing education among Canadian undergraduate nursing students ( N = 674) in all 4 years of their nursing program. Results suggest that nursing students experience and witness bullying behaviors at various frequencies, most notably by clinical instructors and staff nurses. Third-year and fourth-year students experience more bullying behaviors than first-year and second-year students. Implications for practice include ensuring that clinical instructors are well prepared for their role as educators. Policies must be developed that address the issue of bullying within nursing programs and within health care facilities where nursing students undertake their clinical nursing education.

Student nurse perceptions of supervision and clinical learning environment: a phenomenological research study

“…Este tipo de estrés puede estar relacionado con el choque con la realidad, el miedo a cometer errores, sentirse incompetente, sentirse ignorado o la vergüenza de hablar con los profesionales (10,31,32) . Otras veces, la situación es peor, y los estudiantes pueden sentirse intimidados (31,34,36) . Afortunadamente, esta situación no fue manifestada por ninguno de nuestros participantes.…”

A ‘rite of passage?’: Bullying experiences of nursing students in Australia

“…Recent work identifies nurses and clinical facilitators as the main perpetrators of bullying (Clarke, Kane, Rajacich, & Lafreniere, 2012;Tee et al, 2016), reflecting the comments of participants in this study. A perception of bullying as a being 'part of the job' contributes significantly to the problem.…”

“…The following recommendations are drawn from previous work (Birks et al, 2014;Clarke et al, 2012;Gillespie, Brown, Grubb, Shay, & Montoya, 2015;Tee et al, 2016) and aim to prevent and appropriately manage incivility experienced by nursing students:…”

“They can crush you”: Nursing students’ experiences of bullying and the role of faculty

“…Significantly, female students experience more bullying from all sources than male students, and younger students are victimized much more often than older students. [31] In schools in nursing, administrators and senior faculty are more likely to be perpetrators of faculty-to-faculty bullying than new or contract faculty. [32] Administrators who value mentorship, collegiality, transparency, and address workplace conflict in a timely manner will develop and influence healthier workplace relationships and thus decrease the incidence of bullying in their areas.…”

“…[31,60] Power imbalances contribute to victims' feelings of helplessness. [8,61] This is supported by our pilot study as participants stated:…”