Workplace bullying and its association with secondary traumatic stress and turnover intention among emergency and critical care nurses

Items	Mean	SD	Frequency (n)	Percentage (%)
Age (years)	28	4
Years of experience	5.6	3.4
Years employed in current department	3.4	2.6
Number of patients cared for	14	20
Monthly salary	508.7	87.3
Gender
Male			73	48.7
Female			77	51.3
Marital status
Single			78	52
Married			72	48
Educational attainment
Bachelor (undergraduate)			135	90
Master’s or PhD (postgraduate)			15	10
Hospital
Government hospital			80	53.3
Teaching hospital			40	26.7
Private hospital			30	20
Area of work
Emergency			61	40.7
Critical care			89	59.3
Medical-surgical CCU			43	28.7
Neonatal CCU			19	12.7
Pediatric CCU			27	18

Table 2.

The score of NAQ-R and its interpretation.

Items	Mean	SD	Possible range	Interpretation	N (%)
Total score of NAQ-R	62.1	11.6	20–32	Not bullied	0 (0.0)
			33–44	Sometimes bullied	16 (10.7)
			>45	A victim of workplace bullying	134 (89.3)
Work-related	14.8	2.8
Personal-related	13.6	2.9
Physically intimidating	14.3	3.8

Table 3.

Sociodemographic characteristics, bullying behavior, TO intention and STS, M (SD).

Variety and category	B	TO	STS
Gender
Male	61.2 (11.4)	51.6 (6.3)	30.0 (5.3)
Female	62.9 (11.7)	52.4 (8.2)	29.5 (6.1)
t	–0.87	–0.64	0.49
P-value	0.685	0.067	0.390
Age
r	–0.09	–0.18	0.05
P-value	0.286	0.033*	0.565
Marital status
Single	63.3 (12.4)	52.7 (7.5)	29.6 (5.8)
Married	60.7 (10.5)	51.2 (7.1)	29.8 (5.8)
t	1.37	1.18	–0.23
P-value	0.168	0.860	0.819
Educational attainment
Bachelor’s	62.5 (11.5)	52.1 (7.2)	29.8 (5.6)
Master’s	58.7 (12.0)	51.3 (8.3)	28.7 (6.8)
t	1.21	0.40	0.75
P-value	0.844	0.233	0.562
Hospital**
The government hospital	64.26 (11.68)	54.35 (6.10)	29.86 (5.87)
Teaching hospital	64.0 (5.63)	52.35 (5.34)	31.05 (3.58)
Private hospital	62.08 (13.43)	45.16 (8.42)	27.566 (7.17)
F	11.22	22.16	3.29
P-value	0.000*	0.000*	0.040*
Department**
ED	65.67(9.68)	52.15 (7.48)	28.5 (7.18)
Medical-surgical CCU	58.06 (11.91)	51.15 (6.57)	32.1 (8.41)
NCCU	63.94 (12.78)	53.8 (7.12)	34.10 (7.13)
Pediatric CCU	59.03 (11.71)	51.29 (8.31)	29.22 (7.70)
F	4.83	0.60	0.68
P-value	0.003*	0.616	0.563
Years of experience as a registered nurse
r	–0.07	–0.18	0.03
P-value	0.367	0.025*	0.756
Years employed in the current department
r	–0.01	–0.21	0
P-value	0.909	0.009*	0.980
Patient load per shift
r	0.23	0.06	0
P-value	0.005*	0.459	0.952
Monthly income
r	–0.10	–0.12	–0.12
P-value	0.222	0.144	0.158

1 **Note: P < 0.01;

1 *P < 0.05; B, bullying; STS, secondary traumatic stress; TO, turnover intention; NCCU: Neurocritical care unit.

Table 4.

The unique role of bullying in STS.

Roll	B	Std. error	Beta	t	P-value
Roll 1
(Constant)	24.875	2.134		11.658	0
Private hospital	2.692	1.157	0.188	2.326	0.021
Roll 2
(Constant)	17.533	2.691		6.516	0
Private hospital	0.912	1.179	0.064	0.774	0.440
Bullying	0.170	0.041	0.341	4.146	0

1 Note: R1 square change = 0.035; R2 square change = 0.101; STS, secondary traumatic stress.

Table 5.

The unique role of bullying in TO intention.

Roll	B	Sth. error	Beta	t	P-value
Roll 1
(Constant)	35.68	5.21		6.84	0
Age	0.15	0.19	0.09	0.78	0.436
Private hospital	8.27	1.32	0.46	6.26	0
Experience in the nursing	–0.32	0.28	–0.15	–1.14	0.257
Experience in department	–0.29	0.29	–0.11	–1.03	0.303
Roll 2
(Constant)	26.07	5.31	0	4.91	0
Age	0.16	0.18	0.10	0.93	0.357
Private hospital	6.02	1.33	0.33	4.52	0
Experience in the nursing	–0.23	0.26	–0.11	–0.88	0.383
Experience in department	–0.42	0.27	–0.15	–1.57	0.119
Bullying	0.21	0.05	0.34	4.59	0

1 Note: R1 square change = 25; R2 square change = 9.6; TO, turnover.

References

Authors

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Articles in this issue

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/fon-2025-0009 | Journal eISSN: 2544-8994 | Journal ISSN: 2097-5368

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Language: English

Page range: 79 - 89

Submitted on: Nov 4, 2023

Accepted on: Jun 15, 2024

Published on: Mar 14, 2025

Published by: Shanxi Medical Periodical Press

In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services

Keywords:

critical care units,

emergency department,

STS,

turnover intention,

workplace bullying

Related subjects:

Medicine,

Assistive professions, nursing

© 2025 Sandi Mashsha, Ahmad Rayan, Manal Hassan Baqeas, Suhair Hussni Al-Ghabeesh, Yasmeen Abu Sumaqa, Nour Ali Assaf Alrida, published by Shanxi Medical Periodical Press
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Volume 12 (2025): Issue 1 (March 2025)