Sağlık Sektöründe Etik İklim ve Örgütsel Güvenin İhbarcılık (Whistleblowing) Niyeti Üzerine Etkisi: Bir Üniversite Hastanesi Örneği

Abstract

In the health sector, malpractices or unethical behaviors could give rise to important outcomes having impact on human lives. In avoiding this kind of negative outcomes, whistleblowing can be an important tool. It is thought that ethical climate and organizational trust are important factors in promoting whistleblowing. With this study it was aimed to reveal the impact of perception of ethical climate by nurses and secretaries and their level of organizational trust on their whistleblowing intention. Population of the study was composed of 697 nurses and secretaries working at clinics and polyclinics of a university hospital in Ankara. No sampling was made in the study and 53% of nurses and secretaries (369) could be reached. Ethical climate perceptions of participants were evaluated with “Ethical Climate Questionnaire”, their organizational trust levels were evaluated with “Organizational Trust Inventory Short Form”, their whistleblowing intention were evaluated with “Whistleblowing Questionnaire” and the reasons for whistleblowing were evaluated with “Questionnaire for the Reasons of Whistleblowing”. In the analysis of data, comparisons for two groups were investigated with Mann Whitney-U test and the differences between groups that were more than two, were investigated with Kruskal Wallis test. In the evaluation of relation between the variables, Spearman correlation coefficient was used and multi-regression analysis was also applied. In the final stage, by using Path analysis, investigation of structural equation models was realized. Among the ethical climate dimensions of nurses and secretaries participating in the study, principle climate perception dimension had the highest score with 3.64±0.40 average score. Average score of general organizational trust of nurses and secretaries was 3.83±0.66 and their level of trust in their organizations was significantly higher than the average value. Among the whistleblowing intention dimensions, internal whistleblowing (3.50±0.60) had the highest score, whereas among the whistleblowing reasons dimensions, ethical and occupational values (3.64±0.68) had the highest score. According to the regression model, ethical climate dimensions, profession, gender, and work place had significant impact on the whistleblowing intention. According to Path analysis, organizational trust had a direct impact of 39% on the ethical climate score. Ethical climate had direct impact of 69% on whistleblowing intention. It was seen that organizational trust had an indirect impact of 27% on the whistleblowing score. In order to promote whistleblowing in organizations, it is important to keep the ethical climate perception of employees and the level of their organizational trust at high levels.