The culture of caregiving and aggression in psychiatric settings

Organizational culture was used as a general framework for a causal modeling study examining the relationships of work environment with staff beliefs about caregiving and aggression. Specifically, staff who perceived the organization as emphasizing control at the expense of growth and relationship issues would be more controlling in their approach to patients and perceive more aggression. A sample of 162 nursing staff participated from three hospitals. The results indicated that 10% of Aggression was predicted by two model variables indicating control. During exploratory model testing however, age, sex, socioeconomic status and satisfaction with the hospital were all predictive of a controlling belief about caretaking or aggression.