Scientific production on workplace bullying and nursing

a bibliometric study

Abstract

Objective: To verify bibliometric indicators of the scientific production available in online journals that approach workplace bullying and nursing. Method: A bibliometric study making use of Bradford’s law, Zipf ’s law, and textual statistics was carried out with publications in Portuguese, English, and Spanish, made available in national and international databases, from 2000 to 2016. Results: The sample was made up of 111 publications. The main authors had connections with 91 institutions distributed in 24 countries. The United States, Brazil, and Australia were the countries with the most publications. The populations of the studies were made up of nursing professionals and students, and the hospital environment was the most studied setting. The journals with a higher number of publications have international scientific influence. The terms that presented greater semantic power and high frequency in the abstracts were: bullying; assédio moral; and acoso laboral. Conclusion: Indicators showed that workplace bullying occurs in the nursing work environments of several countries, and the number of publications on this theme has tended to increase. Diversifying methods and study settings is important to contribute to the advancement of knowledge and fight against this violence.