Workplace Bullying Associated Health Hazards. Is It Lack of Quality Assurance? A model of Organizational Intervention in Egypt

Background: Bullying at workplace in Egypt is still a hidden problem and most of organizations haven't policy to combat it. WHO/ILO defined bulling as "repeated and over time offensive behavior through vindictive, cruel, or malicious attempts to humiliate or undermine an individual or groups of employees". Objectives: to find out the magnitude of bullying among the studied workers in Egypt, to determine causes, forms and health hazards of bullying among the examined workers and to assess the value of intervention on the prevalence rate of health hazards of bullying among the studied workers. Methodology: Cross - Sectional study was conducted among 1127 workers. The workers were investigated against bullying. All subjects were examined to explore the health hazards. A management commitment policy against bullying was announced inside the workplace besides raising the knowledge of employees about bullying. Reassessment was done after one year. Results: 71.3 % of the studied workers were experienced bullying at workplace. The most prevalent forms of bullying among the examined workers were: discount the person's thoughts (64.2%), Screaming (53.1%), refuse reasonable requests (49.1%), and regular unfair criticism in front of colleagues (39.7%). These proportions were decreased after the intervention to: 27.8%, 16.7%, 19.2% and 8.3% respectively. The main factors determined bullying was: need to meet deadline (91.2%), excessive workload (83.7%), keep workers alert and active (79.6%) and low performance (67.3%). The most prevalent health hazards among the bullied workers were; loss of concentration (60.7%), insomnia (57.1%), headache (53.4%), tachycardia (52.7%), and unexplained fatigue (47.3%). These proportions were decreased after the intervention to: 11.8%, 9.1%, 6.6%, 7.2% and 10.2% respectively. Conclusions: management commitment policy and raising awareness against bullying could be a preventive program for some of health disorders. Recommendation: Policy against bullying might be added to the accreditation tools of quality of health services.