Women and working in healthcare during the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil: bullying of colleagues

Abstract

Background Based on a feminist approach, we analyzed the experiences of workplace bullying suffered by women front-line healthcare professionals dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic. We start from studies that show that women make up 70% of the global health workforce, 85% in the area of nursing, and 90% in the case of social care workers. An unequivocal need thus exists to address gender issues regarding the composition of the labor force in the health area. The pandemic has aggravated recurring problems involving healthcare professionals at the various caregiving levels, such as mental harassment (bullying) and its effects on mental health. Methods Data were gathered from an online survey of a convenience (non-probability) sample composed of 1,430 volunteer respondents, all women that work in the public health system in Brazil. The analyses and discussions involved the responses to a questionnaire containing 12 closed-ended questions and one open-ended question. Results The results revealed a context of workplace bullying aggravated by precarious material, institutional and organizational conditions in the area of health services against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil. This context has variously led to aggression, isolation, heavy workloads, and invasion of privacy, humiliation, persecution and fear as it was possible to see, mainly, in the answers to the study’s open-ended question. This situation degrades both work relations and the integrity of the healthcare professionals who work on the front line to treat Covid-19 cases. Conclusion We conclude that bullying is a psychosocial phenomenon that heightens the oppression and subordination still experienced by women in the contemporary context, but with new hues in a scenario of frontline response to Covid-19.

Ethical care in patients with Covid-19: A grounded theory

“…Another inhibiting environmental condition in the present study was the presence of all kinds of mental, emotional, and social suffering for the nurses, which negatively impacted how they could do the right thing and their inner commitment. In line with these results, Dasilva reported in his study that the existence of social suffering and bullying by high-ranking officials and colleagues towards low-ranking nurses during the Covid-19 pandemic reduced the ethical behavior of medical staff towards patients [ 26 ].…”

Personality traits and workplace bullying among contract trainee doctors in Malaysia

“…This higher prevalence could be explained by the fact that the study population in our study were new batches of trainee doctors who were employed under contract basis by the Ministry of Health, Malaysia. In addition, the current study was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when workload and working hours of these trainee doctors were extended tremendously, which subsequently translated to higher occupational stress [ 17 , 18 ]. These factors may expose trainee doctors to higher WPB.…”

Agotamiento emocional y factores ocupacionales en enfermeras ecuatorianas durante la pandemia de covid-19: una revisión sistemática

“…El ser mujer, es considerado factor de mayor riesgo a padecer problemas de salud mental tales como agotamiento, ansiedad y depresión ante situaciones estresantes como la pandemia en comparación con la población en general (Gramaglia et al, 2022;Jamebozorgi et al, 2022;Moscu et al, 2022;Outeirinho et al, 2023;Swed et al, 2022) lo que coincide con nuestros resultados. Otros factores como tener hijos (Hajebi et al, 2022), ser contratado (Del Pozo-Herce et al, 2021;Molina-Mula et al, 2022) el acoso mental en el trabajo, la autodegradación y el debilitamiento de la identidad, al que han sido objeto las enfermeras, las ha convertido en las principales víctimas de este tipo de violencia psicosocial, dada la feminización de las profesiones sanitarias (da Silva et al, 2023). Se hace necesario plantear acciones encaminadas a brindar una capacitación adecuada, proteger a los trabajadores más vulnerables y promover una salud mental positiva y así mitigar el impacto psicológico negativo vivido en la pandemia (Bassi et al, 2021) que tenga que incluir la perspectiva de género, con un enfoque individualizado, considerando variables de tipo sociodemográfico, laborales (Molina-Mula et al, 2022), o los antecedentes de salud mental considerando diversas medidas de protección y apoyo psicológico tan necesarias a pesar de la levedad de los síntomas.…”