A Series of Initiatives to

             Address Bullying in

              Nursing Education

The Three Pillars: Policy, Education, Partnerships

Policy

Using evidence to create guidelines to address bullying in nursing education

  • Focus on Reporting Mechanisms so that students know where to go if they witness or experience bullying.
  • Published paper: Interrupting the cycle of bullying witnessed or experienced by nursing students: An ethical and relational action framework
  • Template for designing institutional mechanisms for reporting bullying

Education

Using arts-based methods to address bullying in nursing education

  • Workshops for students and workshops for teachers especially Clinical Instructors
  • Cognitive Rehearsal
  • Forum Theatre
  • Graphic Novella
  • ‘Choose your own Adventure’-style interactive video vignettes  
  • Train-the-Trainer video (in development)

Clinical Practice
Partnerships

  • To effectively address bullying in nursing, we need to understand that bullying occurs at both the interpersonal level and the systems level.
  • Addressing bullying needs to occur at both levels. This requires collaboration and building of strong relationships between leaders in health care and leaders in education and leaders in politics.
What is Bullying?

“Silence” by foilman is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Staying Silent

doesn’t Work

The likelihood of nurses and nursing students witnessing or experiencing bullying during their careers ranges from 17% to over 90%.²⁻⁵;⁷⁻¹² Indeed, bullying is so prevalent that nurses are often characterized as ‘eating their young.’¹³⁻¹⁵

Nursing students may tolerate bullying as a ‘rite of passage’¹²⁻¹⁸ and may not report it because of fears of increased bullying, negative evaluations, or limited future professional opportunities.²,³,¹²,¹⁹,²⁰,²¹

Sometimes, students are unaware of school policies,²² unsure how to report bullying,³ respond to bullying by “doing nothing”,¹⁰ and/or believe that nothing would be done.⁹ “No nurse should accept or tolerate a culture where bullying, horizontal violence, or workplace incivility exist.”⁶

Effects of Bullying
Click Here for References

Get In Touch

We hope this website will generate significant discussion and perhaps play a small part in moving us forward to eradicate bullying in nursing practice and education. We would love your comments, questions and suggestions about any of the resources on the website. You can reach us at crabproject@nursing.ubc.ca

Original watercolour crab painting by Skye Maitland, UBC BSN grad 2018