The moderating role of rumination and social sharing in the relationship between mistreatment and service sabotage and depersonalization: A cross-sectional study of hospital nurses

Research has consistently shown that service sabotage is most often an act of retaliation motivated by customer mistreatment. To date, however, service sabotage has seldom been studied among nurses. To examine the impact of mistreatment by patients and relatives on service sabotage and depersonalization among nurses and explore the moderating role of two emotion-regulation strategies, rumination and social sharing, in the relationships between mistreatment and both outcomes. A cross-sectional design was used to collect data from nurses working in a mid-size general hospital in Northern Israel. The sample consisted of 217 nurses. Data were collected using self-reported anonymous questionnaires and analyzed using hierarchical multiple regression. More than a quarter of the nurses surveyed reported frequent exposure to mistreatment by patients or relatives, and 26.4% reported engaging in sabotage acts occasionally or often. Findings demonstrated that both social sharing and rumination were strategies that were frequently employed following mistreatment. Mistreatment and rumination significantly predicted both service sabotage and depersonalization. The results further revealed that rumination exacerbated the effect of mistreatment on service sabotage and that social sharing increased the impact of mistreatment on depersonalization. Rumination also moderated the relationship between social sharing and service sabotage, such that social sharing was positively associated with service sabotage only among nurses who tended to ruminate more frequently. This study contributes to the existing literature by pointing out that when encountering aggressive patients, nurses may engage in revenge seeking behavior in the form of service sabotage, and that not only rumination but also social sharing may intensify the negative effects of mistreatment. Social sharing can become an especially maladaptive coping strategy for individuals who tend to engage in high levels of rumination. The present findings underscore the necessity to further explore the moderating role of emotion regulation strategies in the relationship between mistreatment and work outcomes, and to clarify the conditions under which nurses might tend to engage in acts of sabotage directed at patients.