Bullying And Intimidation In Nursing

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Although bullying, harassment and intimidation has been an occurring issue in the nursing profession Since its inception, it is only in the past decade it has received global recognition as a worldwide occurring workplace issue with serious consequences. Although it is difficult to grasp the accurate frequency of bullying, harassment and intimidation occurring before the last decade, but Vanderslott (1998) suggests that it is an immense problem with the consequences very hard to judge. The British Crime Survey (BCS) found there were close to 849,000 incidents of Bullying and harassment and intimidation at work in England and Wales in 2002/2003 (Budd, 2001). Professions subjected to a high probability of harassment includes police, firemen, …show more content…

In October 2003 the Commission for Health Improvement (CHI 2004), in synchronicity with the National Health Service (NHS) conducted one of the largest workforce surveys. The results suggested that 37% had experienced harassment, bullying or intimidation at work in the previous year. This is an extremely high and worrying amount of employees in the NHS who are exposed to bullying behaviour. An alarming number of staff has witnessed bullying occurring to other colleagues in the workplace(Quine, 1999). In 2000, the Royal College of Nursing compiled a quantitative questionnaire survey of 6000 RCN members in the UK, excluding student nurses, focusing specifically at their well being and working environment in the health sector. The findings reveal that over the last one year of the study, 20% of nurses had been assaulted at least once while on job, 12% of nurses had been assaulted at least once a week, and 3% experienced assault on a daily basis. Just under half of the respondents included in the survey (49%) had been harassed and assaulted 2–6 times in the previous year. A statistical report compiled by Poster and Ryan (1993) exhibits in great detail that physical assault is worryingly high In the healthcare settings. Sofield and Salmond (2003) and O’Connell et al. (2000) suggests that the main perpetrators of bullying, harassment and intimidation towards nurses in healthcare settings are the patients, their relatives and in some cases the doctors, including supervisors and