Undermining in obstetrics and gynaecology

Undermining is widespread in the healthcare environment and can impact negatively on patient care & training. Bullying and undermining are more common in stressful, high workload environments with a blame rather than a learning culture, where there are high levels of interpersonal friction, poor clinical supervision & feedback and poor leadership. There is no good evidence to explain why it happens more frequently in certain specialities and which strategies work best to reduce its incidence. Evidence from PMETB/GMC surveys suggests that in Obstetrics and Gynaecology the prevalence of undermining is high.