Breaking the Cycle of Bullying in Nursing: Emerging Themes

Bullying, horizontal, or lateral violence, and incivility are all terms that are used to describe aggressive behaviors seen in nursing practice between nurses. How and why these behaviors arise has been studied in recent years, but a focus on changing bullying and victim behaviors in prelicensure nursing students has been absent from the literature. The purpose of this pilot study was to examine the attitudes and reactions towards bullying behaviors observed in clinical rotations for BSN students and professional practice for MSN students. The study was conducted utilizing the Bullying in Nursing Education Questionnaire (Cooper et al., 2009) to study perceptions and awareness of bullying in 21 students in a public university in the southwest. A qualitative comment section was included as part of the questionnaire. This article presents the emerging themes found in these qualitative comments. These themes were: communication/miscommunication, coping skills, and zero tolerance