Intimidation: Practitioners Speak Up About This Unresolved Problem

摘要

All too often, seasoned health care providers feel compelled to warn new staff members about a particularly difficult physician and perhaps even shield them from this person. It is a telling sign of a culture that tolerates, even fosters, intimidation. More than 2,000 (2,095) health care providers from hospitals (1,565 nurses, 354 pharmacists, 176 others) responded to a 2003-2004 Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) survey on this subject. Sadly, they confirmed that intimidating behaviors continue to be far from isolated events in health care—and are not necessarily limited to a few difficult physicians, or for that matter, to physicians alone.