When Patient Rudeness Impacts Care: A Review of Incivility in Healthcare

Abstract

Healthcare workers increasingly face incivility and rude behaviors from patients, families, and visitors. Although these are less severe than other types of mistreatment, studies have documented that they may still impact healthcare worker well-being and patient care. Defining and measuring incivility can be challenging because current research relies on the perceptions of the targets. Furthermore, there is often overlap among different types of mistreatment, and much of it goes unreported by those who experience it. Nevertheless, multiple studies have documented that incivility is common in healthcare and has been associated with burnout and intent to leave. In clinical settings, multiple consequences for patient care have been documented, including adverse consequences in the diagnostic and intervention performance of teams, as well as team processes. One theory is that incivility incidents divert cognitive resources away from the intervention and that these experiences may interfere with higher-order reasoning. Although limited research has been performed in the areas of prevention, response to incidents of incivility, and best practices for ameliorating the effects of incivility, some promising interventions have been reported in the literature.

Keywords: healthcare worker well-being; incivility; mistreatment; patient incivility; rude behavior; rudeness.