Kindness in Hospitals: A Mixed-Methods Reasoned Action Approach to Understanding Prosocial Communication in Health Care

Abstract

A rapidly growing body of evidence concludes that kindness is vital to human health and well-being. In hospitals, healthcare delivered with kindness improves patient and provider outcomes. Though the importance of kindness in healthcare is generally accepted, patients, families, and hospital employees report the need for more kind behavior. Theory-based and empirically driven interventions to increase kind behavior are needed. The current studies used group concept mapping and the reasoned action framework to operationalize kindness and examine the underlying beliefs and psychological determinants of kind behavior in hospitals. This formative research is crucial for developing, implementing, and evaluating organizational kindness interventions. Study 1, a community-based group concept mapping study, identified hospital employees' conceptualizations of kind behavior. Study 2 utilized the reasoned action approach to explore the underlying beliefs associated with intention to engage in kind behavior and test the psychological determinants of behavioral intention. Results revealed 1) six discrete categories of kind behavior in hospitals; 2) attitudinal, normative, and control beliefs about engaging in the different types of kind behaviors; and 3) instrumental attitude and capacity as the strongest determinants of intention to engage in kind behavior at work. The findings demonstrate the utility of a community-based, mixed-methods approach combining group concept mapping and the reasoned action framework to provide a foundation for developing organizational kindness interventions in healthcare contexts.