Increasing awareness of bullying through small-scale initiatives in higher education
Intended for healthcare professionals
Evidence and practice    

Increasing awareness of bullying through small-scale initiatives in higher education

Elizabeth Curtis Assistant professor, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
Frank O’Rourke School manager, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
Catherine Comiskey Professor in healthcare statistics, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
Sonam Prakashini Banka-Cullen Research fellow, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

Why you should read this article:
  • To enhance your understanding of workplace bullying, particularly in nurse education

  • To read about small-scale initiatives implemented in a university to increase awareness of bullying

  • To recognise how distributed leadership and implementation science can support development and implementation of improvement initiatives

Employees are entitled to work in an environment that upholds their dignity and respect, but bullying still exists in many disciplines, including in nurse education and nursing practice. Researchers have suggested that to address bullying employers need to intervene at team and/or organisational level rather than focusing solely on the individuals involved. To reduce the incidence of bullying and other adverse social behaviours in the workplace, many higher education institutions and healthcare organisations have developed dignity and respect (D&R) policies. In this article, the authors describe the development and implementation of several small-scale initiatives designed to increase awareness of bullying and D&R policy among staff and students at the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Trinity College Dublin. The interventions were informed by the concepts of distributed leadership and implementation science.

Nursing Management. doi: 10.7748/nm.2022.e2070

Peer review

This article has been subject to external double-blind peer review and checked for plagiarism using automated software

@ComiskeyCath

Correspondence

catherine.comiskey@tcd.ie

Conflict of interest

None declared

Curtis E, O’Rourke F, Comiskey C et al (2022) Increasing awareness of bullying through small-scale initiatives in higher education. Nursing Management. doi: 10.7748/nm.2022.e2070

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank staff at the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Trinity College Dublin

Published online: 23 November 2022

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