Turkish nursing students’ perceptions and experiences of bullying behavior in nursing education

Objective: This descriptive study aimed to determine the bullying and harassment experiences of nursing students’ in various Nursing Schools in Turkey. The types and frequency of bullying behaviors, the sources of bullying behaviors, and students’ emotions towards these experiences were investigated. Methods: Study participants were 370 undergraduate nursing students from four different Turkish Nursing Schools. To estimate bullying at nursing school I used a short version of the Negative Acts Questionnaire that adapted according to the earlier studies on bullying against nursing students particularly those conducted by Cooper et al. and Celik and Bayraktar. Results: A total of 222 respondents (60%) reported that they had experienced at least one of the thirteen bullying behaviors at daily and weekly frequencies during the last six months. Work related bullying was the most frequently encountered type of bullying behaviors which is followed by personal related bullying behaviors. Also, an interesting result from this study is that most students reported clinic nurses as their bully, indicating that the perpetrators were mostly females and older than them. Conclusions: This study supports previous reports of bullying against Turkish student nurses and adds to the scant body of literature showing that nursing students often experience bullying and harassment from clinical nurses (horizontal bullying), and importantly, this may influence their future employment choices.