Bullying culture in NHS starts at top, says royal college head
BMJ 2017; 356 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.j1192 (Published 07 March 2017) Cite this as: BMJ 2017;356:j1192
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Bullying is ubiquitous and iniquitous, but misunderstood. Although it’s usually considered sadism with vulnerable victims, bullying is actually a neuropsychiatric disorder (which I call “neuro-bullying”) that is rooted in our autonomic nervous system.
Our autonomic nervous system consists of two opposing branches: the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic system responds to fear and pain with hate and “fight or flight.” The parasympathetic system responds to trust and pleasure with relaxation and vulnerability.
Ideally, the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems are in dynamic balance. But just as fear and pain can overpower trust and pleasure, the sympathetic system can overpower the parasympathetic system. This causes us to fear and hate vulnerability, both in others and ourselves.
I propose that bullying is fear and hatred for the vulnerability of the parasympathetic system. This is why bullies target vulnerable groups like women and children, as well as the poor, elderly, disabled, and socially stigmatized.
Finally, the cure for bullying, and most social woes, is to protect the vulnerable, but vital, parasympathetic system, because vulnerability is not weakness or bleakness, but the greatness of meekness, the elixir of life and fixer of strife.
Competing interests: No competing interests
Re: Bullying culture in NHS starts at top, says royal college head
Despite acute shortages of medical doctors at home [1], British politicians engaged in isolationist inflexible chauvinistic Brexit rhetoric, threatening European doctors' work permits/pension plans, causing massive planned exodus of deluded health professionals [2][3][4], and NHS managers are already panicking to keep old doctors in their posts or frenetically train nurses as "physician associates" to replace missing medical personnel.
We can all attest that such institutional NHS bullying against tens of thousands of foreign medical doctors comes from the very top.
Threatening EU with hard Brexit would not deliver any healthcare consequences abroad, but would inflict catastrophic outcomes in the UK NHS.
References
[1]
http://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h3993
http://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.i1511
http://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i5952
http://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i6535
[2] http://www.bmj.com/content/356/bmj.j966
[3] http://www.bmj.com/content/356/bmj.j988
[4] http://www.bmj.com/content/356/bmj.j1123
Competing interests: No competing interests