Dive Brief:
- In a study conducted at Bnai-Zion Medical Center in Haifa, Israel, researchers found that staff in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) who were berated had lower diagnostic and procedural skills scores than those who were not treated poorly.
- During the study, NICU members were randomly assigned to one of two groups: 1) a control group; or 2) an "incivility" group.
- The study's findings were published this month in Pediatrics.
Dive Insight:
Previous studies have suggested that stress may be a factor in medical errors. "[Incivility is] part of the culture of medicine in many ways, and the study is important because it demonstrates that this element of physician culture is harmful to patient care,” Dr. Peter Bamberger of Tel Aviv University, a co-author of the study, told Reuters Health in a telephone interview.
During this study, an NICU physician from the US who was posing as a “visiting expert” made two disparaging comments within earshot of the team that was assigned to the "incivility" group. The first, which was made before the team began a simulation exercise, was that he was “not impressed with the quality of medicine in Israel.” Around 10 minutes after the simulation exercise began, the expert asked the team members to stop. He told them that although he liked some of what he saw, the medical staff he’d observed in Israel “wouldn’t last a week” in his department.
Among the 39 clinicians in the group that was berated, diagnostic and procedural performance scores averaged 2.6 and 2.8, respectively, versus 3.2 and 3.3 for the 33 people in the control group.