PROCESSING UNACCEPTABLE BEHAVIORS OF CO-WORKERS: A NATURALISTIC STUDY OF NURSES AT WORK.
Contributors: New York University.
Published: 1987
Number of pages: 358
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: This study was based on M. E. Roger's view of human beings as inseparable from their environments. Simultaneous patterns of environmental change and individual change among nurses at work were the focus of the research. To identify these patterns required studying the nurses' working day. A naturalistic study using participant observation and interviewing coupled with grounded theory methodology was designed to accomplish this task.

Using the methodology of grounded theory, the data were interactively collected and analyzed for an eight month period on the day shift on one nursing unit. Data were collected also on the evening and night shifts, on holiday days, and weekend days for comparative analysis. These data were continually coded and re-coded following the methodology of grounded theory. Constant comparative analysis and data-source triangulation were used in the analysis of these data.

The study focus that emerged from observing nurses at work was: What bothers (disturbs/disrupts) a nurse most while at work? The findings revealed that it was the unacceptable behaviors of their co-workers that bothered them more than any other single factor and that this affected their moods and their perceptions of the working day.

The two-staged Processing Unacceptable Behavior Model (PUB Model) was developed to explain the process that nurses engaged in when confronted with a co-worker's unacceptable behavior. In Stage 1 of the PUB Model the process that co-workers engage in when confronted with infrequent or isolated unacceptable behaviors is depicted. In Stage 2 it is shown how repeated occurrences of unacceptable behaviors by one individual can develop over time into a pattern of tolerated behaviors. In the PUB Model the context in which the behavior occurs and the context in which the behavior is processed are conceptualized as a filtering system.

Discussion of the mundane, everyday unacceptable behaviors of co-workers found in this study are presented as they relate to professional practice standards, the Code for Nurses, moral and ethical nursing dilemmas, and co-worker behaviors. Conclusions and recommendations for nursing practice, nursing education, and nursing research are also presented.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-01, Section: B, page: 0075.

Thesis (PH.D.)--NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, 1987.

School code: 0146.