Interprofessional perspectives on faculty-to-faculty incivility from nursing and social work

Healthcare delivery systems frequently require interprofessional collaboration between members of several health and social care professions. In the United States, two of the largest are nursing and social work. How these two professions address incivility between faculty members is not well understood. This paper describes the results of an examination of Faculty-to-Faculty Incivility (FFI) by both social work and nursing educators. National surveys of U.S. social work faculty (n = 216) and nursing faculty (n = 588) indicate common concerns between the two groups. Nursing and social work educators experience similar rates of behaviors that may be considered FFI, but social workers are more likely to identify these behaviors as uncivil. Data suggest that there are differences between nursing and social work faculty in their beliefs about the causes of FFI, and also in their reported barriers to addressing FFI in the workplace. The discussion highlights concerns that are common between the groups, contextual aspects that differ between the two professions, and ways in which interprofessional collaboration between nurses and social workers in academia and healthcare can help to address this problem among both groups.