Lagged effects of Psychosocial Safety Climate on Bullying, and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder in Remote Area Nurses

Psychosocial safety climate (PSC) refers to a specific organisational climate for the psychological health of workers. In low supply it is a latent pathogen for hazardous behaviours (i.e., bullying, harassment). We assessed the lag effects of unit PSC and bullying on post-traumatic stress disorder assessed 24 months later. We used a novel design whereby unrelated data from remote area nurses were used across time (N = 190, Time 1; N = 163 Time 2), but were matched at the work unit level (N = 48). Around 15-24% of the variance in PSC was due to the work unit.  Using HLM we found that unit PSC was positively associated with bullying perpetrated by a manager or co-worker both within time, and across time. Psychosocial safety climate predicted change in post-traumatic stress disorder. Co-worker bullying at Time 1 was associated most strongly with change in trauma within the work unit. Results support the notion of PSC as a latent pathogen for hazardous behaviors, that in turn have traumatic consequences. Crucially the lagged effects link two distinct data sets, PSC predicting average levels of bullying of ‘other nurses’, and bullying predicting trauma in ‘other’ nurses in the same work unit 24 months later.