The phenomenon of bullying in the working environment of nursing staff - surveys
Main
Abstract
Introduction. The nursing profession is characterised by many factors that are a source of stress and conflict. In many situations, aggression and violence is the way to react, and this can lead to what is often described as bullying. The aim of the study. Analysis of the phenomenon of bullying in the working environment of nursing staff. Materials and methods. The research was conducted using the survey method with the use of the author's questionnaire. The group of respondents consisted of 92 health care workers aged 22-59 years.Results. The phenomenon of bullying in the nursing environment is frequent (41%) and medium (38%). The signs of bullying in-clude activities such as: unjustified criticism and ridicule (87%), gossip leading to slander (59%), commissioning tasks below qualification (58%), criticism (53%). Behaviour of this type was attributed to repeatability (73%), purposefulness (59%) and long duration (36%). Among the victims of mobbing, workers (67%) and co-workers (54%) were mentioned, with all witnesses of the phenomenon (58%) or only the employer (42%) being held re-sponsible for the aggressive actions occurring. The causes of the phenomenon were considered to be lack of skills in personnel management (79%), faulty work organisation (63%), antisocial behaviour of the superior (63%), insufficient implementation and compliance with anti-mobbing procedures (57%).Conclusions. The nursing community sees the problem of bully-ing as widespread, especially in groups with seniority in the pro-fession up to 25 years. The most important causes of mobbing were lack of personnel management skills, poor work organisa-tion and antisocial behaviour of the superior. Men more often stressed the unbalanced labour market and lack of employment stability. The place and length of service was also a factor differ-entiating the perception of the phenomenon. Persons with shorter professional experience attributed the signs of bullying to unjusti-fied criticism and ridicule, when the criticism itself was important for open-care staff. The professional experience also changed the perception of the personality traits of the bully. With the exten-sion of the length of service, the interviewed nursing staff at-tributed a low level of empathy to the bully when interviewed with up to 5 years of service, they emphasized a desire for con-stant control. Along with the increase in professional experience,
the respondents emphasised the role of compliance with work regulations as the most effective method of prevention. The staff
of the inpatient clinic more often paid attention to the care of transparency of the criteria of decisions made towards employees. Despite demonstrating general knowledge of the phenomenon of bullying, nurses expressed the need and readiness to participate in training courses on the subject.