Bullying in the Australian and New Zealand Midwifery Workforce: A Scoping Review

Background The issue of bullying in midwifery was first reported almost three decades ago (Hastie, 1995). Bullying sadly continues to be an inherent part of midwifery workplace culture (Catling et al., 2017), a culture within which the future midwifery workforce is being socialised and is learning and reciprocating these behaviours (Capper et al., 2021). Being bullied at work adversely impacts midwives on a number of personal and professional levels leading to career dissatisfaction, health problems (Gillen et al., 2008), burn out, and workforce attrition (Yoshida & Sandall, 2013). Alarmingly, bullying in maternity services has also been linked to poor outcomes for mothers and babies. In March of this year, an independent review of an English maternity service identified that a culture of bullying and fear had contributed to a number of severe adverse clinical outcomes spanning two decades (Ockenden, 2022). In order to address the midwifery workplace culture issues and the potential for adverse clinical events they can lead to, it is important to understand what is currently known about this phenomenon in the Australian and New Zealand contexts. Aim To undertake a review of the literature to determine what is known about the workplace bullying of registered midwives working in Australia and New Zealand. Methods The JBI framework for conducting scoping reviews (Peters et al., 2020) was used. Findings A total of 13 papers arrived at themes related to bullying and were therefore included in the review. Their extracted data was charted, and a descriptive summary of the results was produced. This summary will be presented at the conference. Conclusions To date, no research has specifically explored midwives’ experiences of being bullied in the workplace in the Australian and New Zealand contexts. This is an area that warrants further investigation in order for the antecedents to be identified and addressed.