How witnessing rudeness can disrupt psycho‐motor performance of dental students

Abstract

Rude and disrespectful behaviors are ubiquitous and pervasive in the workplace. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of witnessed rudeness on dental student psychomotor performance. Using an experimental, betweensubjects design, 71 2nd (Sophomore) year dental students witnessed either an experimental (rude) or control (neutral) condition in which a confederate lab manager interacted in a rude or neutral manner with a prospective lab assistant candidate. Students then performed a mock prosthodontics psychomotor examination as part of the fixed prosthodontics preclinical course. Results indicated that those students who arrived at the experimental session cognitively depleted (+1 SD above the mean) and were exposed to the rude condition were significantly more likely to make critical errors when performing a posterior bridge preparation, compared to those students in the control group. There were no significant differences between the rude and control conditions for participants who were not cognitively depleted (−1 SD below the mean). Overall, the findings indicate that for those dental students suffering from cognitive depletion, merely witnessing rudeness can have adverse impacts on psychomotor performance and potentially, eventual patient care.

A review of the short‐term implications of discrete, episodic incivility

“…The effects of episodic incivility in the medical field are also featured prominently in the incivility literature. For example, work by Johnson, Haerling, Yuwen, Van Huynh, & Le (2020) found that nursing groups exposed to a single incident of incivility failed to follow standard protocols for administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), dental students displayed reduced psycho‐motor performance (Woolum et al., 2021), and medical professionals were more likely to display declines in procedural and diagnostic performance (Risken et al., 2015). Within the medical field, experimental research has demonstrated that a single instance of incivility can result in poorer performance and lower information‐sharing among medical staff (Katz et al., 2019; Risken et al., 2015), lower diagnostic accuracy in neonatal intensive care units (Risken et al., 2015) fewer helping behaviors and decreased team member communication (Risken et al., 2015), and serious errors in the performance of CPR (Johnson et al., 2020).…”

Kindness Isn’t Just about Being Nice: The Value Proposition of Kindness as Viewed through the Lens of Incivility in the Healthcare Workplace

“…Woolum and colleagues studied dental students who witnessed a lab manager in an unrelated and rude or pleasant interaction prior to a surgical task [ 71 ]. They found that those exposed to this rude interaction were cognitively depleted, performed significantly worse than those in the control condition, and made significantly more errors.…”

Rudeness and team performance: Adverse effects via member social value orientation and coordinative team processes.

“…Goldberg and Grandey (2007) found that customer rudeness increased the number of subsequent task errors customer service representatives made, and recent work has found that rudeness can harm performance even in critical contexts like medical settings (B. Cooper et al, 2022;Riskin et al, 2015Riskin et al, , 2017Woolum et al, 2021). However, research on rudeness in organizations has focused almost exclusively on its impact on individual victims, leaving its impact on work teams largely unexplored (Schilpzand et al, 2016).…”

“…Goldberg and Grandey (2007) found that customer rudeness increased the number of subsequent task errors customer service representatives made, and recent work has found that rudeness can harm performance even in critical contexts like medical settings (B. Cooper et al, 2022; Riskin et al, 2015, 2017; Woolum et al, 2021).…”