Jaypatient-induced service sabotage behavior: the issue of self-esteem of hospital nurses

Worrying incidents exist where disgruntled nurses destroy good service quality through sabotage behavior. Previous studies report the organizational and environmental factors that might lead to service sabotage behaviors; here individual differences in proclivity to service sabotage within any given environment of managerial context are reported. The study first uses interviews to establish typologies of difficult patients. Regression analysis and ANOVA applied to survey data shows that low self-esteem in nurses leads to service sabotage behavior, and that these nurses are less mature both chronologically and emotionally, less experienced, and less educated than their more typical counterparts.