Interprofessional perspectives on faculty-to-faculty incivility from nursing and social work

ABSTRACT

Healthcare delivery systems frequently require interprofessional collaboration between members of several health and social care professions. In the United States, two of the largest are nursing and social work. How these two professions address incivility between faculty members is not well understood. This paper describes the results of an examination of Faculty-to-Faculty Incivility (FFI) by both social work and nursing educators. National surveys of U.S. social work faculty (n = 216) and nursing faculty (n = 588) indicate common concerns between the two groups. Nursing and social work educators experience similar rates of behaviors that may be considered FFI, but social workers are more likely to identify these behaviors as uncivil. Data suggest that there are differences between nursing and social work faculty in their beliefs about the causes of FFI, and also in their reported barriers to addressing FFI in the workplace. The discussion highlights concerns that are common between the groups, contextual aspects that differ between the two professions, and ways in which interprofessional collaboration between nurses and social workers in academia and healthcare can help to address this problem among both groups.

KEYWORDS:

• Health and social care
• interprofessional education
• team culture
• professionalism

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank our colleague, Dr. Theresa Flowers for her keen insight and assistance at the outset of this project. We would also like to thank Kaitlin Reggiardo, our graduate assistant, for her top-notch assistance with data collection. Finally, we acknowledge the support of the Adelphi University Institutional Review Board and School of Social Work in the opening stages of this research.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shannon R. Lane

Dr. Shannon Lane is an Associate Professor at Wurzweiler School of Social Work, Yeshiva University. She studied social work at University of Michigan (Master of Social Work) and University of Connecticut (PhD). She studies political social work, and is the co-author of Political Social Work: Using Power to Create Social Change and Social Welfare Policy in a Changing World.

Jennifer McClendon

Dr. Jennifer McClendon is an Associate Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno School of Social Work, where she teaches multiple courses across the undergraduate and graduate curriculum. She earned her Master of Social Work PhD in Social Work from Washington University in St. Louis. She researches university-community partnerships that strengthen social work curricula.

Victoria Osborne-Leute

Dr. Victoria A. Osborne-Leute is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at Sacred Heart University.  She completed her BA in psychology, Master of Social Work and PhD in Social Work from Washington University in St. Louis.  Her research focuses on integration of behavioral health in primary care, including evaluation of interprofessional experiential training for nursing, social work, and health professions students.

Kim Baxter

Dr. Kimberly Baxter is the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs at the University of Nevada, Reno, Orvis School of Nursing.  She completed her BSN and MSN as a Family Nurse Practitioner at the University of San Diego and her DNP at Touro University Nevada.  Her research focus includes interprofessional education and clinical reasoning in prelicensure nursing education.