Introduction/purpose: Incivility is a serious occupational health and safety issue within healthcare, which disproportionately impacts nurses and midwives. This is no more evident than within perioperative nursing. The environmental characteristics and critical nature of perioperative care creates risk for peer-to-peer and interprofessional conflict and incivility, impacting staff, patient safety, and the perioperative nursing workforce. Evidence also suggests that incivility, which may be perceived as ambiguous, has been normalised as part of healthcare culture. The purpose of this scoping review was to explore the available evidence regarding incivility in perioperative nursing. Understanding these types of behaviours may assist with developing strategies to support an inclusive and safe workforce environment.
Methods: The scoping review methods followed JBI and PRISMA-ScR reporting guidance. Seven databases were systematically searched to identify published and unpublished primary research on incivility in perioperative nursing. Critical appraisal was undertaken on included studies to determine quality of the reported literature. The PAGER framework was used to identify patterns in the literature.
Results: A total of 31 studies from five continents were included in the review. Included studies focused primarily on perioperative nurse’s experiences of incivility, highlighting incivility in perioperative nursing as a global issue with significant impacts on victims. Evidence reporting on the types of perpetrators, organisational responses and impacts on patients and staff were also identified in included studies. Methodological issues such as inconsistent measurements, ambiguity surrounding definitions and behaviours, as well as underreporting of events, impact on the included studies.
Conclusion: Incivility experienced by perioperative nurses in the perioperative environment remains a significant risk to supporting staff recruitment and retention of perioperative nurses. The results of this review have informed a pilot study investigating the feasibility of utilising real-time data collection methods to collect further data on incivility in the perioperative environment.