Disruptive Behavior in Health Care Organizations: A Comprehensive Analysis

Disruptive behavior in health care settings is a significant problem that impacts the quality of provided care. In this review, we describe unprofessional behavior, connect it to decreased efficiency of healthcare providers, discuss the current measures against it, and propose alternative ways to improve professionalism in health care. This paper follows the PCAN approach (Problem, Causes, Alternatives, and Net Benefits) as a framework for our analysis, using the existing industry knowledge and published r e s e a r c h. During the last decades, the health care industry has become increasingly aware of a significant problem: intimidating and disruptive behaviors. Isolated papers have been published on this subject in the past, but since 2002, the issue of behavioral problems in health care has become the focus of worldwide research and a regular discussion topic between patient safety experts. As Thomas (2011) stated: "Psychological research on teamwork contributes to improvements in care delivery, patient outcomes, and ultimately, public health.’’ Unprofessional behavior in a health care setting disrupts a team's communication, cooperation, and efficiency, making it a Patient Safety and Public Health problem. According to the Joint Commission: "Intimidating and disruptive behaviors include overt actions such as verbal outbursts and physical threats, as well as passive activities such as refusing to perform assigned tasks or quietly exhibiting uncooperative attitudes during routine activities".

Author(s): Alexandros C. Christopoulos

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