Patients are not fully human: a nurse's coping response to stress

In this paper, dehumanization of patients was studied as a strategy used by nurses to cope with stress. Affective commitment to the organization (AOC) and affective commitment to patients (ACP) were tested as moderators. We also explored how nurses’ humanity attributions to their ingroup relate to stress symptoms. Participants were nurses working in different wards of an Italian urban hospital. Findings showed that perceiving patients as not fully human was related to lower levels of stress symptoms for nurses with high AOC and ACP, but not for nurses with low AOC and ACP. Moreover, for highly committed nurses, the attribution of uniquely human traits to the ingroup was associated with increased stress symptoms. Implications of findings for the relationship between nurses and patients are discussed.