While bullying in the healthcare workplace has been recognized internationally, there is still a culture of silence in many institutions in the United States, perpetuating underreporting and insufficient and unproven interventions. The deliberate, repetitive, and aggressive behaviors of bullying can cause psychological and/or physical harm among professionals, disrupt nursing care, and threaten patient safety and quality outcomes. Much of the literature focuses on categories of bullying behaviors and nurse responses. This qualitative study reports on the experiences of nurses confronting workplace bullying. We collected data from the narratives of 99 nurses who completed an open-ended question embedded in an online survey in 2007. A constructivist grounded theory approach was used to analyze the data and shape a theory of how nurses make things right when confronted with bullying. In a four-step process, nurses place bullying in context, assess the situation, take action, and judge the outcomes of their actions. While many nurses do engage in a number of effective yet untested strategies, two additional concerns remain: inadequate support among nursing colleagues and silence and inaction by nurse administrators. Qualitative inquiry has the potential to guide researchers to a greater understanding of the complexities of bullying in the workplace. 1. Introduction The situations are subtle and can range from sarcastic comments to being set up with the wrong patient chart… these sorts of things undermine your work day… erode your sense of comfort and security that you need to do your job in a professional manner (Nurse 41, 2007). The consequences of workplace bullying are as evident today as they were one hundred years ago. In 1909 Leon Harris condemned the treatment of nurses by their managers in an article published in The New York Times. Dr. Harris, citing multiple examples of workplace mistreatment, emphasized how “head nurses abuse their position of power” [1]. A century later the workplace has changed for the better in many parts of the world [2]. Yet, in spite of such advances, nurses still experience bullying in the workplace. As the toll of workplace bullying has become more widely known in all work settings, research has dramatically increased. Many North American studies focus on behavioral categories, causes, and typologies of individual responses [3]. There is limited information on how nurses experience and resolve workplace bullying. While bullying in the healthcare setting has been internationally recognized and researched [4, 5], many
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