Social Bullying in Nursing and Health Sciences Academia: A Qualitative Study

Background: Academic social bullying in nursing and health professions schools is an understudied area yet emerging research shows it is prevalent. Purpose: This qualitative study derived from two larger quantitative studies targeting the development and validation of an instrument measuring academic social bullying and whose purpose was to understand the phenomenon in greater depth from narrative comments. Methods: Survey design with open ended questions was utilized to obtain content and construct validation along with reliability data for a de-novo instrument measuring academic social bullying. Over 250 nurse academics and 417 health sciences educators in baccalaureate and higher degree programs in the United States responded. This qualitative study focused on analysis of narrative comments (N = 91 nurse respondents and N = 89 health sciences faculty respondents, respectively) provided in response to open ended questions. Results: Five qualitative themes emerged from narrative content analysis. Qualitative themes approximated the construct-validated factors in the quantitative studies but also expanded on them. The themes included: Bullying experiences, faculty issues, issues of academia, student bullying of faculty, and general comments about bullying. Conclusion: Academic social bullying is a significant phenomenon for nursing and health sciences educators affecting faculty well-being. This study’s qualitative findings can help enrich understanding of the problem and augment future quantitative and qualitative studies with the hope of developing targeted interventions.