A Review of Bullying among Healthcare Professionals: Building a Foundation for Occupational Therapy

Abstract

Occupational therapy (OT) is a health profession that uses meaningful day-to-day activities (occupations) to improve clients’ physical, social, and mental wellbeing. OT, along with many other fields of healthcare, is experiencing a bullying problem which can hamper all aspects of a clinician’s education and career. This paper aims to bridge the gap in OT literature where bullying is not being adequately addressed by analyzing bullying behaviors in other healthcare professions. This review identifies patterns and prevalence of bullying and incivility across medical literature, common characteristics of bullies and their victims, how these behaviors affect victims, and some of the reasons why bullying has been difficult to address. Though this information is valuable, it shows a further need for action over simply studying the issue of bullying before meaningful change can happen.