Nursing students’ experiences of faculty incivility: A qualitative exploratory study

Academic incivility has a common problem in academic settings including nursing schools. The aim of the present study was to explore nursing students’ experiences of faculty incivility.

Methods & Materials: 

This was a conventional qualitative content analysis approach. Fourteen bachelor’s nursing students were purposefully recruited from two faculty of nursing in, Karaj, Iran. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews and analyzed via the conventional content analysis. .

We derived two main categories from students’ experiences; “hidden faculty incivility” and “obvious faculty incivility”. Hidden incivility contained four subcategories, includes lack of mastery over the subject matter, inattentiveness to the learning climate of the class, inability to manage the class, and unfair evaluation. Obvious incivility also included the three subcategories of speech-behavior contradiction, authoritative behavior, and unconventional behavior.

This study suggests that faculty incivility can have various aspects and beyond obvious offensive behaviors which mainly pertains to faculty interaction and teaching skills. Nursing faculties and nursing education authorities need to acquire adequate knowledge about the different aspects of faculty incivility and employ strategies for its prevention and alleviation.