755 Workplace incivility among health care workers and its health outcomes: mental health and physical complaints

Abstract

Introduction For decades, workplace mistreatment such as psychological aggression, bullying, violence or interpersonal conflicts have received worldwide attention. On the other hand, health effects from milder mistreatment such as workplace incivility are not fully investigated. The aim of the study was therefore to investigate the association between workplace incivility and its mental and physical consequences. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted in various private health care centres in 2013 and 600 self-administered questionnaires were returned with sealed envelope (response rate: 91.2%). Supervisor incivility, co-worker incivility, subordinate incivility and instigated incivility were measured by Straightforward Incivility Scale (SIS) (Leiter, 2012) and mental health such as vigour, anger-irritability, fatigue, anxiety, and depression and physical complaints were measured by the New Brief Job Stress Questionnaire (Inoue , et al. , 2014). Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted to estimate the effect of each incivility on mental health and physical complaints. Result Average age of the participants was 45.4 (SD:11.5) years old and occupations included nurses (34.7%), care workers (25.0%), clerks (18.0%), doctors/pharmacists (5.1%), other co-medicals (17.1%). The results of correlation analyses showed that all incivility variables had positive and significant associations with mental health except for vigour, which showed a negative association. Results of hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that supervisor incivility had a significant main effect on depression, while co-worker incivility on fatigue and anxiety and instigated incivility on anger-irritability. Discussion Health effects from workplace incivility among health care workers may vary depending on who the perpetrators are. This contributes to understanding of mental health consequences from workplace incivility.