Incivility in the practice environment: a perspective from clinical nursing teachers

This paper advances a notion of incivility as a precursor to a continuum of antisocial acts culminating in bullying behaviour. Clinical teachers (CTs), working with undergraduate nursing students in a variety of clinical settings from a large urban centre, were studied. Using a mixed method design, CTs were asked to define and describe the nature, type and frequency of uncivil encounters. Data was collected across four practice settings, which included, acute care, maternal child, community and mental health. To unpack the complex nature of incivility we applied a conceptual model based on bullying behaviour which permitted us to analyze CTs narratives for both form (i.e., direct vs. indirect incivility) and function (i.e., reactive vs. proactive). The results suggest that indirect incivility was the most prevalent subtype narrative reported. One of the implications of this study is that nurse educators can help new clinical students recognize the different subtypes of in/civility in the practice environment as an essential first step before targeted intervention programs can be developed and implemented to create civil learning and safer working environments.