Bullying in the workplace

The world of work is all too often riddled with people experiencing high levels of fear. This holds true in healthcare organisations as it does in all work environments. Stress, anxiety and fear create a perfect environment for bullying.

NHS England's NHS staff survey 2014, published last year, showed that almost a quarter (24%) of staff said that they experienced harassment, bullying or abuse from their manager or other colleagues in 2014, a slight increase from 23% in 2013.

NHS employees at all levels say it is not safe to speak out which has led to a ‘cover-up culture’.¹

In July 1948, the same year the NHS was created, Professor Harold Ellis qualified as a doctor. Professor Ellis is 89 and still working as a clinical anatomist at King's College, London. In February 2015, Ellis talked about how disturbing he found Sir Robert Francis' report on whistleblowing; the levels of bullying exposed in the NHS shocked him. Ellis believes the increase in bullying is to a large extent down to the failures of modern NHS systems to assign clear lines of responsibility for managing staff and for delivering patient care. As increasingly more services are outsourced there is increasingly less clarity about who is in charge.²