Effects of students' incivility on nurse educators in a South African School of nursing

Background: The phenomenon of incivility is becoming more common in society and nursing academia is also not unaffected (Sprunk, LaSala, & Wilson, 2014). Student incivility towards educators, according to Clark (2013), is referred to as “rude or disruptive behavior that negatively impacts faculty levels of well-being, sense of self-worth, and commitment to teaching”. Students’ behavior becomes a concern for nursing faculty as nursing is a profession (White, 2011) and starts with education in the classroom and the clinical setting (Rosenkoetter, & Milstead, 2010) that needs to prepare students to become professional nurses. The responsibility accompanied with preparing students entering the profession of nursing therefore is not an easy process and can result into threats for the educator in the role of acting as a “gatekeeper” for the profession as students frustrations in a professional nursing program may transpire into uncivil behavior (Gazza, 2009). Other researchers like DalPrezzo and Jett (2010) are also of the opinion that student incivility is a common cause of hurt for nursing faculty.
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present the actual or perceived effects of student incivility on the lives of nurse educators’ in a South African School of nursing.
Methods: A qualitative descriptive design using a phenomenological approach was used in the study. A purposive sample of 11 nurse educators provided the data in individual face-to-face interviews until data saturation was reached. These were educators who had experienced the effect that students’ incivility had on their lives.
Results: The researcher mostly drew on the work of Streubert and Carpenter (2007) for analyses. Data analysed indicated that the educators had varying but often similar perspectives of how students’ incivility affected their lives. Nurse educators cited tiredness, lack of energy, frustration, feelings of worry, lack of motivation, feeling disrespected, lack of morale, powerlessness and lack of job satisfaction as the effects of student incivility on their lives, with three resultant themes of physical effects, emotional effects and work related effects.
Conclusion: The implications of the findings for the education and training of nurses were discussed, as well as the implications for the nurse educators’ personal and professional lives. Recommendations made included developing measures to reduce or eliminate incivility among nursing students, perhaps through implementation of policies in the nursing school; providing emotional support for nurse educators who deal with incidents of uncivil behaviour and to establish structures where nurse educators can share their experiences of uncivil encounters with students in the classroom setting and what worked and what did not work in dealing with such behavior.
Clinical relevance: Nursing school administrators may gain a better insight into nurse educators’ experiences with student incivility in the classroom setting and how it affects their work and personal lives.