Bullying among undergraduate medical students at Tanta University, Egypt: a cross-sectional study

Bullying is an aggressive behaviour that involves unwanted negative actions, which are repeated over time that can negatively impact a person.

To explore bullying behaviours experienced by Tanta University undergraduate students during their study in clinical medical education.

A cross-sectional study was conducted at Faculty of Medicine, during the period between first of October 2018 to end of May 2019. A stratified random sample was used to select medical students who rolled fourth-, fifth- and sixth-year classes at the academic year 2018-2019. Data were collected by a self-administered questionnaire included questions regarding demographic characteristics, history of exposure to different types of bullying and the response of bullied students.

Findings of this study revealed that 71.1% of studied sample faced bullying during their medical study. The most frequently reported types were verbal (51.9%), behavioural (44.8%), being ignored (24.4%), written (17.8%) and physical (15.8%). About half of students (49.4%) were exposed to multiple forms of bullying. Male students were more exposed to physical, written and being ignored, whereas females were more witnessed to verbal and behavioural ones as follows: (30.7% vs 18.9% physical type, 72.5% vs 74.8% verbal, 28.1 vs 24.9% written, 57.9% vs 68.3% behavioural and 38.5% vs 32.4% being ignored), respectively. Fellow students (56.3%) were the most frequent perpetrators of mistreatment actions. The majority of students (91.3%) chose not to report bullying behaviours. Having mental health problems (0.00*) or disability (0.01*) were significantly more potential to experience mistreatment.

Large proportion of medical students faced many forms of bullying.

Applying an effective policy to stop bullying with support for medical students may help to minimize this phenomenon.