This study aimed to explore public opinion on workplace bullying in the nursing field, by analyzing the keywords and topics of online news comments.

This was a text-mining study that collected, processed, and analyzed text data. A total of 89,951 comments on 650 online news articles, reported between January 1, 2013 and July 31, 2018, were collected via web crawling. The collected unstructured text data were preprocessed and keyword analysis and topic modeling were performed using R programming.

The 10 most important keywords were “work” (37121.7), “hospital” (25286.0), “patients” (24600.8), “woman” (24015.6), “physician” (20840.6), “trouble” (18539.4), “time” (17896.3), “money” (16379.9), “new nurses” (14056.8), and “salary” (13084.1). The 22,572 preprocessed key words were categorized into four topics: “poor working environment”, “culture among women”, “unfair oppression”, and “society-level solutions”.

Public interest in workplace bullying among nurses has continued to increase. The public agreed that negative work environment and nursing shortage could cause workplace bullying. They also considered nurse bullying as a problem that should be resolved at a societal level. It is necessary to conduct further research through gender discrimination perspectives on nurse workplace bullying and the social value of nursing work.

The purpose of this study was to identify the response patterns of nursing unit managers regarding workplace bullying.

Q methodology was used to identify the response patterns. Thirty-six Q samples were selected from the Q population of 210 that included literature reviews and in-depth interviews with clinical nurses and nursing managers. Participants were 30 nursing unit managers who had experience managing workplace bullying and they classified the Q samples into a normal distribution frame measured on a nine-point scale. The data were analyzed using the PC-QUANL program.

Five types of response patterns were identified: (1) sympathetic-understanding acceleration, (2) harmonious-team approach, (3) preventive-organizational management, (4) passive observation, and (5) leading-active intervention. The preventive-organizational management type was most frequently used by the nursing unit managers.

The results of this study indicated that nursing unit managers attempted to prevent and solve workplace bullying in various ways. Therefore, it is necessary to develop and conduct leadership training and intervention programs that appropriately address the response patterns of nursing unit managers, such as those identified in this study.

This research aimed to investigate the effects of a cognitive rehearsal program (CRP) on workplace bullying among nurses.

A randomized controlled trial was performed. Participants were 40 nurses working in different university hospitals in B city, South Korea. The experimental group was provided with a 20-hour CRP comprising scenarios on bullying situations, standard communication, and role-playing. To evaluate effects of the CRP, we measured interpersonal relationships, workplace bullying, symptom experience, and turnover intention at pre-and post-intervention. Follow-up effect was measured in the experimental group only at 4 weeks after the intervention.

After the intervention, there were significant differences in interpersonal relationships (F=6.21, p=.022) and turnover intention (F=5.55, p=.024) between experimental and wait-list groups. However, there was no significant difference in workplace bullying or symptom experience between the 2 groups. The beneficial effects on interpersonal relationships and turnover intention lasted at least up to 4 weeks after CRP.

The CRP for workplace bullying improves interpersonal relationships and decreases turnover intention. So it can be utilized as one of the personal coping strategies to reduce the the turnover among nurses. Further studies on the effects of unit- or hospital-based CRP and on the long-term effects of CRP are necessary.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the workplace bullying experience of Korean nurses.

Participants were twenty current or former hospital nurses who had experienced workplace bullying. Data were collected through focus group and individual in-depth interviews from February to May, 2015. Theoretical sampling method was applied to the point of theoretical saturation. Transcribed interview contents were analyzed using Corbin and Strauss’s grounded theory method.

A total of 110 concepts, 48 sub-categories, and 17 categories were identified through the open coding process. As a result of axial coding based on the paradigm model, the central phenomenon of nurses’ workplace bullying experience was revealed as ‘teaching that has become bullying’, and the core category was extracted as ‘surviving in love-hate teaching’ consisting of a four-step process: confronting reality, trial and error, relationship formation, and settlement. The relationship formation was considered to be the key phase to proceed to the positive settlement phase, and the participants utilized various strategies such as having an open mind, developing human relationships, understanding each other in this phase.

The in-depth understanding of the workplace bullying experience has highlighted the importance of effective communication for cultivating desirable human relationships between nurses.

The purpose of this study was to develop an instrument to assess bullying of nurses, and test the validity and reliability of the instrument.

The initial thirty items of WPBN-TI were identified through a review of the literature on types bullying related to nursing and in-depth interviews with 14 nurses who experienced bullying at work. Sixteen items were developed through 2 content validity tests by 9 experts and 10 nurses. The final WPBN-TI instrument was evaluated by 458 nurses from five general hospitals in the Incheon metropolitan area. SPSS 18.0 program was used to assess the instrument based on internal consistency reliability, construct validity, and criterion validity.

WPBN-TI consisted of 16 items with three distinct factors (verbal and nonverbal bullying, work-related bullying, and external threats), which explained 60.3% of the total variance. The convergent validity and determinant validity for WPBN-TI were 100.0%, 89.7%, respectively. Known-groups validity of WPBN-TI was proven through the mean difference between subjective perception of bullying. The satisfied criterion validity for WPBN-TI was more than .70. The reliability of WPBN-TI was Cronbach's α of .91.

WPBN-TI with high validity and reliability is suitable to determine types of bullying in nursing workplace.

The purpose of this study was to use cost-benefit analysis of activity to clarify the economic effect of prepared nurses versus atmospheric environment managing engineers as healthcare managers.

For the study 111 workplaces were surveyed, workplaces in which nurses or atmospheric environment managing engineers were employed as healthcare managers. The survey content included annual gross salaries, participation in external job training, costs in joining association covered by the company, location and year of construction of the healthcare office, various kinds of healthcare expenditures, costs in operating healthcare office, health education, and activity performance in the work of environment management.

In the case of the healthcare manager being a nurse, benefit was larger than input costs at a ratio of 2.31. On the other hand, in the case of healthcare manager being an atmospheric environment managing engineer, input costs were larger than benefits (benefit-cost ratio 0.88).

Results indicate that nurses are an effective healthcare human resource and can offer good quality healthcare service. Therefore companies should hire nurses and actively promote the economic efficiency of nurses in workplace.