ABSTRACT
The chapter is based around a number of accounts of bullying within the NHS and is applicable to all healthcare professionals. While bullying is a complex process, by looking at the scenarios general practitioners will be able to better understand bullying mechanisms from a number of angles. The chapter focuses on subjective experiences of healthcare professionals as they attempt to deal with bullying. The emergence of bullying behaviour is a complex and detailed process. Bullying is a learned process which is very much organisationally mediated in the NHS. The chapter offers an alternative account to those theorists who see the bully as having certain personality traits. The serial bully is the individual who continues bullying over a period of time by focusing on a variety of victims in the workplace, and this is not an uncommon situation in healthcare. These bullies tend to follow a classic bullying career; they are often well known, but little complained about.
