Why We Need a Single Definition of Disruptive Behavior

Abstract

Disruptive behavior is known to produce a wide range of negative effects in healthcare, such as impacting patient safety, lowering employee morale, and decreasing employee retention. Healthcare organizations have worked towards eliminating disruptive behavior; however, despite countless interventions, the issue continues to be a problem today. Why then does the issue of disruptive behavior persist? We argue that one reason is the multiple ways disruptive behavior can be described, henceforth defined as the "plurality of terms", which can make it difficult to collect relevant data by doing a simple literature search. Hence, we believe having a single definition for "disruptive behavior" will improve the meta-analysis on disruptive behavior research.