About

Who am I?

I am just your average frontline healthcare worker.  Hard-working, intrinsically motivated and… bullied.  1 in 4 NHS staff are bullied or harassed by another NHS staff member.  Not a drunk patient or angry relative, but a colleague, a manager, a peer…

I worked for 6 years in the NHS before I joined a prestigious trust and hospital with an endemic bullying culture, and was bullied severely by my line manager when I tried to raise a concern.  My career is a before and after of this pivotal moment. It has come to define me, whether I wanted it to or not.  There was before I was bullied.  And then there was after.  I am a different person now.

I spent some time in a spiral of helplessness and self-pity.  I got sick.  I spent time on sick leave.  I thought about leaving my profession, applied for opportunities elsewhere.  And then gradually, I saw the light.  No one could make me feel anything unless I gave them the permission to do so.  I may not have a voice in the recognised channels, but I could make myself heard.  Bullying thrives on the conspiracy of silence.

‘The more you refuse to hear my voice, the louder I will sing…’

As I raised from the gloom, I realised I was not alone.  Many, many others shared my experiences, even if they didn’t feel they could speak up about them.  Blame always seems to fall at the foot of the individual who experiences the bullying, they need counselling to be more resilient, they need to speak to a local guardian to ‘rationalise’ their experience, they are deficient in some way.

Bullying and harassment blame does not lay at the feet of any individual, but at a system that enables a bullying culture to thrive, that in my most cynical mind, encourages it as a vehicle of supposedly increasing productivity and stripping off the weak.  But in the words of Yumna Moosa ‘I genuinely believe in the healing power of kindness and mutual respect.’