Date of Award
2026
Document Type
Thesis
Abstract
Background: The phrase “nurses eat their young” has long been used to describe the culture of incivility and bullying often directed at nursing students. These behaviors in the nursing clinical learning environment break down nurse-student relationships. To address this issue, nursing staff must have the tools to fulfill their roles as educators and mentors in clinical settings. The purpose of this project is to implement and evaluate the effectiveness of an evidence-based asynchronous educational workshop focused on incivility reduction and student mentorship among nursing staff in a rural hospital setting.
Methods: This study used a quantitative, one-group pretest–posttest intervention design to evaluate the effectiveness of an educational workshop on incivility and mentorship for staff nurses who work with nursing students during clinical rotations. A sample of twenty (N=20) nurses completed an asynchronous educational workshop consisting of three learning modules. This educational workshop was designed using Swanson’s Theory of Caring as a framework. Data were collected using two validated survey instruments, the Nurses' Attitudes Towards Nursing Students Scale (NATNS) and the Mentoring Competency Assessment (MCA-21).
Results: The Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test performed on the collected data revealed statistically significant differences in NATNS scores (Z = -3.127, p = .002) and in MCA-21 scores (Z = -3.730, p < .001). These results suggest that the evidence based educational workshop improved nurses’ perception of students and increased mentoring competencies.
Conclusion: This project concludes that brief educational workshops regarding incivility and mentorship can be effective tools for improving nurses' attitudes towards nursing students and enhancing mentorship competency among nursing staff in a rural hospital setting.
Keywords: nursing students, bullying, incivility, staff nurses, mentorship, communication, educational workshop, nursing education, clinical experiences
Recommended Citation
Dyal, Shelley, "From Tension to Teaching: Combating Incivility and Bullying Behaviors Directed at Nursing Students" (2026). Theses. 67.
https://roar.una.edu/theses/67
