Search results

Previous research has demonstrated that social-relational factors are instrumental to employee voice. An essential aspect of this relates to notions of respect or disrespect. Although nurses commonly report experiencing professional disrespect in their interaction with doctors, earlier studies have focused on how the professional status hierarchy and power imbalance between doctors and nurses hinder speaking up without considering the role of professional disrespect. Addressing this gap, we explore how professional disrespect in the doctor–nurse relationship in surgical teams influences the willingness of nurses to voice legitimate concerns about threats to patient safety.

Fifty-seven semi-structured interviews with nurses drawn from a range of specialities, ranks and surgical teams in three hospitals in a West African Country. In addition, two interviews with senior representatives from the National Registered Nurses and Midwifery Association (NRNMA) of the country were undertaken and analysed thematically with the aid of NVivo.

Disrespect is expressed in doctors’ condescending attitude towards nurses and under-valuing their contribution to care. This leads to safety concerns raised by nurses being ignored, downplayed or dismissed, with deleterious consequences for patient safety. Feeling disrespected further motivates nurses to consciously disguise silence amidst speech and engage in punitive silence aimed at making clinical practice difficult for doctors.

We draw attention to the detrimental effect of professional disrespect on patient safety in surgical environments. We contribute to employee voice and silence by showing how professional disrespect affects voice independently of hierarchy and conceptualise the notion of punitive silence.

This paper aims to emphasize the need for a strategic approach to employee retention beyond financial benefits. This is directly proportional to employee retention. Bringing out the retention measures preferred by employees, depicting the relationship of demographic profile with employee retention tendency and exploring implications giving importance to beyond paycheque factors are the objectives of the study.

This study uses applied qualitative approach with a realistic view to collect the details of retention measures and practices from purposively selected 36 health-care experts by the conduct of interview using a one-to-one discussion with written notes. With quantitative approach, opinion survey was administered to receive the perceived opinion of randomly selected 350 health-care employees on paycheque and on beyond paycheque factors boosting their intention to stay. Bhattacharya and Ramachandran’s health-care study framework on retention was applied for the identification of the factors.

Both paycheque and beyond paycheque benefits are important for retention. Most respondents prefer beyond paycheque factors practiced at sampled hospital. Age, marital status and residence of employees are significantly associated with retention. The strategic initiatives of the sampled hospital to retention concerning motivational needs of employees in the workplace are thank you board, camp head, ad act camp, success corner and so forth.

Addressing health-care work and relationship-related issues in terms of employee retention giving importance to beyond paycheque benefits – remedy for compassion fatigue health-care employees face in routine works, meeting promises made by management regarding paycheque or beyond paycheque benefits, employees participative in decisions in medical, clinical and in functional areas, reducing workload and role stress by the conduct of role analysis.

Many research studies are emphasizing the contribution of financial benefits to employee retention. Only a few studies have been carried out exploring and emphasizing the importance of beyond financial benefits motivating employee retention. This is the study of evidence from a hospital that gives strategic importance to beyond paycheque elements as well as paycheque elements.