Hospital nurses experiencing day‐to‐day workplace incivility: A diary study on the benefits of daily social support

Abstract

Aim The present study investigated the adverse effects of daily experienced incivility and the positive role of daily social support during the workday in predicting daily emotional exhaustion after work and vitality and positive affect at bedtime. Background Despite the broad knowledge of the impact of experienced incivility in different occupations, little is known about day‐to‐day nurse incivility, much less in the hospital context. Method After completing a general questionnaire, hospital nurses (n = 96) completed a diary questionnaire twice a day for five consecutive workdays (n = 480 diary observations). The diary design had two levels: 5‐day repeated measures (Level 1, day level) nested in persons (Level 2, person level) using an experience‐sampling methodology. Results Multilevel hierarchical analyses showed that incivility during the workday increased emotional exhaustion after work (t = 3.00, p = <0.05) and reduced vitality (t = −2.48, p = 0.05) and positive affect (t = −2.23, p = 0.05) at bedtime. However, daily social support during the workday was a crucial job resource that directly benefited hospital nurses' daily wellbeing (t = 5.19, p = 0.01 vitality; t = 4.89, p = 0.01 positive affect) and buffered the adverse effects of daily workplace incivility (t = −2.33, p = 0.05). Conclusion The within‐person approach of our findings suggests that supportive practices can reduce day‐to‐day incivility spirals. Implications for Nursing Management Nurse managers can promote a civility culture within their units using in service training programmes at work.

Frequency and outcomes of workplace incivility in healthcare: A scoping review of the literature

“…Also making it difficult to compare and contrast frequency findings was the variation in the instruments' response time frames, which ranged from as long as the past 2 years (Smith et al, 2010) to as short as during the current day (Blanco‐Donoso et al, 2019; Carmona‐Cobo & Lopez‐Zafra, 2021). The original Workplace Incivility Scale asked respondents to answer the questions based on the previous 5 years (Cortina et al, 2001).…”

Would you mind sharing your story? A narrative exploration of incivility experiences in the Information Technology workplace

“…It is evident that WI adversely affects both work outcomes (Jawahar and Schreurs, 2018) and non-work outcomes (Zhou et al, 2019); its prevalence has surrounded various sectors, including manufacturing (Wu et al, 2014) and service. In the service sector, WI research has been majorly reported in healthcare (Armstrong, 2018;Bar-David, 2018;Carmona-Cobo and Lopez-Zafra, 2021), education (Sakurai and Jex, 2012) and hospitality (Aljawarneh and Atan, 2018;Jin et al, 2020). Despite the fact that WI has been widely studied and investigated in a variety of areas, the current study was prompted by three key facts.…”

“…Notably, WI research specific to the IT workplace has been neglected from such explorations while other workplaces healthcare (Bar-David, 2018;Armstrong, 2018;Carmona-Cobo and Lopez-Zafra, 2021) in the same sector were given due attention. Similar to Cho et al (2016), Shafran-Tikva et al (2017 found that explicit threats and verbal violence onto healthcare professionals primarily represented the influence of patients' and their companions' WI.…”

“…, 2014) and service. In the service sector, WI research has been majorly reported in healthcare (Armstrong, 2018; Bar-David, 2018; Carmona-Cobo and Lopez-Zafra, 2021), education (Sakurai and Jex, 2012) and hospitality (Aljawarneh and Atan, 2018; Jin et al. , 2020).…”

“…Specifically in the service sector, several studies have been reported, e.g. in healthcare (Armstrong, 2018; Bar-David, 2018; Raaj and Anju, 2019; Carmona-Cobo and Lopez-Zafra, 2021), educational sectors (Sakurai and Jex, 2012), hospitality and restaurants (Aljawarneh and Atan, 2018; Jin et al. , 2020), etc.…”