Impact of bullying on clinical performance among nursing students at clinical setting

Abstract

Bullying is universally identified as a persistent problem in the nursing profession which basically impacts the antithesis of the compassionated essence of nursing. Bullying negatively affects the clinical learning and educational life of nursing students. A descriptive cross-sectional quantitative design was utilized to accomplish this study. The design was employed to identify the impact of bullying on clinical performance of nursing students. The study also examined the types, frequencies, perpetrators of bullying and coping behavior of nursing students towards bullying. The highest bullying behaviors of the nursing students experienced were verbal abuse and humiliation in front of other people. Bullying results in various types of long term and short-term consequences. Most importantly it affects the skill development among nurses. It is recommended that there must be clear, written SOP’s for the staff working in the clinical facility. This type of documentation should be available for everyone and should be the part of professional training. This can reduce the incidence of the bullying. Another thing is the establishment of healthy relationship between the junior and senior staff members because most of the time it is seen that the senior and junior staff is involved in bullying. Next is the proper training of the nurses about their roles and responsibilities at student level.