Civility, Forgiveness, and Personality Characteristics : Exploring the Relationships of these Concepts in Nursing Education and Practice

Abstract

Civility, or lack of civility (incivility), in nursing has been studied since the 1990s. Forgiveness and personality are concepts that have not been studied together with civility. This project focuses on nursing but is applicable to other professions and interactions. Incivility is sometimes described as more experienced workers “eating their young”. The consequences of incivility include adverse nurse, patient, and healthcare organizational outcomes, psychosocial and physiological distress, disruptions in learning, disagreements, tension, aggression, possibly threats of violence, and negatively impact patient safety and quality of care. On the contrary, civility promotes healthy and professional behaviors, improved safe patient care along with improving patient satisfaction, and positive, healthy learning environments. Forgiveness is an important process that addresses consequences of incivility such as anger, psychological distress, and physiological distress. Reported that forgiveness may decrease stress related to negative situations at work and may improve health, wellness, and outcomes on the job. Personality characteristics such as emotional stability and agreeableness impact forgiveness as well as moderate responses to incivility. In fact, employee agreeableness and emotional stability had a negative relationship with customer incivility.