Incivility in the Occupational Therapy Workplace: A Survey of Practitioners

Incivility in health care settings has detrimental effects on practitioners' well-being, patient outcomes, and health care costs.

To explore the prevalence and types of perceived incivility experienced by occupational therapy practitioners in their workplaces and the relationships between perceived incivility and practitioner demographics.

Cross-sectional, online survey.

Surveys were posted to occupational therapy social media sites.

Occupational therapy practitioners throughout the United States. Outcomes and Measures: The Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised (NAQ-R) was used to measure incivility and bullying. Participants answered demographic questions, and one-way analyses of variance and t tests were used to examine differences between demographic characteristics and mean scores on the NAQ-R.

A total of 1,320 practitioners completed the survey. Although the incidence of incivility was low compared with prior research in other health professions, 11% of respondents reported being victims of bullying in the workplace. Practitioners with less experience and who worked in long-term care and skilled nursing settings were more likely to experience incivility, and occupational therapy practitioners experienced significantly less incivility than occupational therapy assistants.

Practitioners, colleagues, managers, and organizations must collaborate to foster an environment of civility and respect to mitigate the effects of incivility on patient outcomes, practitioners' well-being, and health care costs. What This Article Adds: This survey provides baseline information regarding incivility experienced by occupational therapy practitioners, an important first step in developing evidence-based interventions to promote safe and healthy workplaces.