Doctors’ Abusive Supervision and Patients’ Deviant Behavior in Taizhou, China: The Mediating Role of Patients’ Negative Emotion

Abstract

Objective To explore the association between doctors’ abusive supervision and patients’ deviant behavior, and to evaluate the mediating role of patients’ negative emotion. Methods A cross-sectional study with a convenient sample was conducted among hospitalized patients from April 13 to May 23, 2022, at a medical center in Taizhou, China. A total of 923 hospitalized patients participated in this survey. Collected data was analyzed based on correlation analyses and mediation regression approach. Results The findings showed that inpatients who think they experienced abusive supervision from their doctors exhibited higher negative emotion and were more likely to engage in both interpersonal and organizational deviance. In addition, the higher negative emotion the inpatients had, the more likely they would take deviant behavior. Of note, patients’ negative emotion served as a mediator between doctors’ abusive supervision and patients’ deviant behavior. Conclusion Both doctors’ abusive supervision and patients’ negative emotion were found to be significantly correlated with patients’ deviant behavior, with negative emotion playing a mediating role between abusive supervision and deviance. This finding will be helpful for studying the doctor-patient relationship.