Table 3.

Themes and exemplars for Category 3: Response to Bullying Behavior

Themes	Exemplars
Physical	“I made myself physically sick one morning because I didn’t want to be there.”
Emotional	“It like pissed me off, like I’m a freaking adult you know. I don’t know, it like really made me mad more than hurt and upset.”
Psychological	“I had a really difficult time in clinical at one point. Um, like to the point where I just didn’t want to go to clinical anymore because that person is there and you would just get like so stressed out and have so much anxiety about it and like apprehension that you’re going to have to interact with this person.”
Avoidance	“Every time I had to call the doctor [bully], I was really hesitant. And like I normally was like always on top of like calling the doctor and be like, “Hey, this is going on, this. I need an order for this.” But when that doctor – I saw her name, and I had a pager, I wouldn’t do it. Like, I told my nurse to do it. So like, I tried to just avoid it.”
Productivity and performance	“You get anxiety and that completely shuts a lot of people down. And you - you can’t get your work done. You can’t, um, critically think. You can’t do all these things that are necessary to provide optimal - adequate, optimal patient care and then ultimately a safe healthcare environment, um, because your brain is just clouded with am I going to have to see this person? What am I going to do? They’re going to say this and then I’m going to say this. And, you know, we kind of flood our brains with all these other scenarios, but that’s anxiety and that’s - that’s so real to the - to a lot of students. And they’re put in certain situations or made to interact with certain people that they may not get along well with or otherwise mistreat them. Um, so yeah. That’s - it definitely affects your clinical work.”
Learning	“I had a problem with one of the staff nurses and she came in after ignoring me for a long time and refusing to give me a report and stuff, making me behind. You were talking about meeting objectives, I didn’t meet any of them that day because um I couldn’t get the patient – I couldn’t establish trust with the patient.”
View of Healthcare	“It personally made me not want to be a nurse for a little bit because I was like am I, am I that dumb, am I – am I not supposed to be doing this. Am I going to kill someone because if that’s what this is about then I need to stop now cause that’s how she made me feel every day was that I was just the worst possible nurse in the world and I shouldn’t even be continuing.”