Researchers: Alon Lisak¹, Dorit Efrat-Treister¹

Background: In recent years there has been an increase in aggression of care receivers towards medical staff in emergency departments. A possible source of this aggression is cultural gaps, which result in decreased care receivers’ satisfaction. Thus, cultural factors that interact can help reduce these gaps and reduce the level of aggression, through increasing satisfaction.

Objectives: A. Understand how cultural factors can be combined to raise satisfaction and lower care receivers’ tendencies to engage with aggression.
B. Understand how care receivers' and medical staff' cultural interactions can influence this relationship.

Method: Two field studies were performed in the emergency department of a large hospital in southern Israel.
In study 1, 214 Jewish and Arab care receivers (patients and escorts) participated.
In study 2, eight medical staff (specialized physicians) and 168 care receivers participated.

Findings: Study 1 - A combination of openness to diversity, cultural accessibility, and being a minority group member (Arab) predicts increased satisfaction and decreased aggression of care receivers.
Study 2 - There is an effect of compensation between the cultural factors of care receivers and medical staff which combine to increase satisfaction and a reduce in aggressive tendencies.

Recommendations: We recommend integrating cultural accessibility factors (including language accessibility) into the emergency departments, along with structured training for the cultural competence of medical staff.
We recommend a personal fit of culture-based behavior of medical staff towards care receivers.

Research end date: 11/2019