Bullying among medical students: Integrative literature review

This integrative literature review aimed to identify the prevalence and characteristics of bullying among medical students. The bibliographic survey was carried out in six databases: LILACS, PsycINFO, PubMed, SciELO, SCOPUS and Web of Science. In all bases the crossings of keywords were carried out: bullying AND medical students; bullying AND medical school. Only articles published in the last 10 years and published in Portuguese, Spanish and English were selected. Among the 111 identified articles, nine have met the inclusion criteria and were analysed. All of them were published in the last five years (2014-2018). The quantitative method was the most used (77.8%). The prevalence of bullying ranged from 12.3% to 98.69%, with average percentage of 39.1%. The most prevalent aggression was verbal, followed by physical and cyberbullying. Verbal aggression was the most practiced by both sexes. Men practiced more physical aggression toward women. The places where the aggressions occurred most frequently were in the classroom, social networks, university exit, restrooms and cafeterias. When there was some help to the victim, it was performed by friends, most of the time. It is concluded that bullying has a high prevalence among medical students. Thus, better identification of bullying by the university, training of teachers and the provision of a support network and student orientation are fundamental to prevent and reduce this occurrence.