The Relationship between Workplace Bullying and Quality of Nursing Work-Life in the Intensive Care Units

Abstract

Background: The World Health Organization (WHO) identified the worldwide increase in workplace bullying as a serious threat to nurses’ health, well-being and reported the need to eliminate workplace bullying (WPB) as a high priority. Nurses as the major group of health service providers need to have a satisfactory quality of work life in order to give desirable care to all patients in the hospital, and WPB is one important factor that lead to a decline in nurses’ quality of work-life, satisfaction as well as their efficiency and competency. Aim: to investigate the relationship between workplace bullying and the quality of nursing work life in the intensive care units at Damanhour Chest and Fever Hospitals. Settings : This study was conducted at the Intensive Care Units at the main two hospitals at El-Beheira governorate namely: Chest Hospital and Fever Hospital. Which are affiliated to the Ministry of Health and Population. Subjects: The subject of this study included all nurses who were working in the previously mentioned setting with experience more than 6 months (n=145). Tools: two tools were used. Tool one: “The Negative Act Questionnaire (NAQ)". Tool two: “Quality of Nursing Work Life Instrument ( QNWL)". Results: The study showed that 79.3% of the studied nurses had a moderate level of workplace bullying and the highest dimension was related to physical and psychological intimidation .Furthermore, the total level of quality of nursing work life was fair and the highest dimension was related to work warld Conclusion: The study results also indicated that there was no statistically significant correlation between workplace bullying and quality of work life among the studied nurses Recommendations: Adopt zero tolerance policies that include appropriate investigation and due process necessary to provide adequate safeguards to nurses and others who are accused of WPB, encourage nurses to report the incidence of bullying behaviors without fear and promote a culture of safety that encourages open and respectful communication among all healthcare providers.