Bullying against Healthcare Professionals and Coping Strategies: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Violence against healthcare professionals is an event that further burdens the daily lives of those who try every day to care for and assist those who need it most. In an attempt to overcome these events, there are coping strategies that can be used to reduce the stress caused. Therefore, this study aims to analyse the phenomenon of violence against healthcare professionals and the relationship between the bullying suffered by these professionals and the coping strategies they developed to overcome these moments. To this end, a scoping review was conducted in which eight articles were selected for final analysis from a total of 276 articles found in three electronic databases (EBSCO, PubMed, and Web of Science). This review concludes that the most common workplace bullying behaviours include excessive workloads, humiliation and ridicule, impossible deadlines, and verbal attacks. Professionals reported negative impacts, such as helplessness, depression, stress, insomnia, and the desire to change jobs. Victims of workplace bullying often expressed their intention to leave their current job or even abandon the profession. Problem-focused coping strategies are the most used. The studies indicated that workplace bullying negatively affects professionals in physical and mental terms, as well as in terms of quality of life at work, requiring more research and adoption of preventive measures to identify and combat the problem.