Abstract

Caring behaviour is central to all health care organizations and their employees. Nurses spend considerable time with patients and they are ethically bound to provide quality nursing care, regardless of their patients’ social class, gender or ethnic background. To improve patients’ experience of care, it is important that nurses are aware of factors – both within themselves and in their working environment – that might influence their attitude and behaviour. The purpose of this study was to describe and assess factors contributing to nurses’ negative behaviour at a public health facility in Namibia. A quantitative, non-experimental, explorative and descriptive design was used. Simple random sampling was used to select 64 nurses. A pre-tested questionnaire was used to collect data, which were then analysed with the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), version 23, using descriptive statistics.

The study results showed a strong association of nurses’ negative behaviour to management’s reluctance to address the nurses’ negative behaviour, 85.9% (55) and patients’ behaviour and cultural practices 73.4% (47). The study recommended that rewarding nurses who display acceptable behaviour would be one of the cost effective strategy to motivate nurses who display professional behaviour.

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