In their work, ISFs have to deal with various stressful situations, internal to the company they work for, and external. Within the company they can be the subject of increasingly pressing (and illegal) actions to bring about sales "results", to control (always illegal) of an area manager who can even be suffocating and who depends on a sector that it has to do with scientific information. They have to submit to analysis of statistical and non-real sales data on which they have no possibility of verifying and on which their future work depends. And in order to bring results, they are required to increase the average visits to doctors.
And here comes another critical aspect that the ISF has to face: the doctor's waiting room. It is this aspect that we address in these notes.
Lack of respect for those who work is increasingly widespread. Depending on the service in question, customers, users, patients, students and their parents end up adding to work stress with their rudeness.
If we ask a nurse, a social worker, a doctor who works night watch or a teacher or a Scientific Whistleblower if they have ever had suffer acts of impoliteness and rudeness during work, offensive and sometimes threatening comments from patients, it is very easy to get affirmative answers. Not only that: great concern and dissatisfaction also emerge for the progressive deterioration of their work, which is largely based on interpersonal relationships.
After all, in doctors' surgeries, ambulances, social services, public "counter" services and in the world of schools (starting even from primary schools) by now the press reports episodes of rudeness, arrogance and lack of respect from part of customers, users, patients, students and their parents.
Unpleasant situations that often evolve into conflicts, verbal aggression and even serious forms of physical violence. Even the new communication technologies tend to favor these methods of disrespectful exchange between professional and user, transforming any possible small incident into a completely unjustified occasion for being pilloried.
We are facing theworkplace incivility, understood as one deformation of professional interaction, characterized by impropriety, rudeness, arrogance. They express a substantial lack of respect for the work of others and an incapacity to decentralize the relationship with a professional who provides his services in an organizational context that is not always facilitating and optimal.
Incivility manifests itself with unjust, insolent or impolite forms of contempt, with the intention, not always aware, of harming the worker by violating the rules of civil coexistence and professional respect. Examples of incivility by users include: making unpleasant and humiliating comments about the operator, interrupting him and raising his voice as he tries to give an answer, undermining his credibility in front of others even with non-verbal attitudes, making more or less oblique threats .
It should be noted that this kind of incivility, also deriving from the claim to be served immediately without respecting the rules, is mainly focused 
on operators who are believed to hold positions of less social power and is very common in front-office jobs.
One must speak of "work incivility" only when the various incorrect behaviors and ill-treatments occur with a low intensity. Their degree of intensity, that is, differentiates them from the 3 possible outlets of the dangerous symmetrical escalation (rigid and growing contrast) of a distorted interaction between operator and user: 1)- verbal aggression, which is explicitly directed towards the objective of hurting the interlocutor; 2)- actual violence, corresponding to an often serious and uncontrollable form of physical aggression; 3)- the counter-productive behaviors of the user due to frustration for some unsatisfactory outcome of the relationship with the services and which are expressed, for example, with damage to objects, thefts or false claims and refusal to collaborate.
The growing prevalence of workplace incivility is a cause for concern for a series of possible deleterious consequences for people and the organization. Psychological research has shown that incivility is a daily social stressor. Although of small unitary significance (modest annoyances, irritations and momentary discomfort), it accumulates progressively, causing serious negative effects on the psychophysical well-being of the worker. In particular, the emotional component of burnout - psychophysical emotional exhaustion connected to feelings of helplessness, "trapping" and sometimes despair - seems to be the most affected, also causing strong job dissatisfaction and interference on commitment and level of performance.
From an organizational point of view, the most feared consequences concern the growth of absenteeism and requests for job changes and the development of a psychosocial climate unfavorable to cooperation. Above all, the lowering of the quality of the service has been reported.
How to react to provocations. Ask yourself if it is a fundamental or futile point, if the provocation is intentional or casual, if you can change the situation. A degeneration of the discussion is not convenient for obvious reasons. Faced with a provocation or a phrase that hurts us, we are tempted to climb and strike in turn but this will lead to a dead end where you yourself will be even more emotionally affected. "Responding instead of reacting" means taking control of the situation, not giving satisfaction to the person in front of you. Reacting without thinking is a loser from the start. You need to be cool and lucid. Then ask yourself “why are these people so difficult?” and you will discover that it is actually in them a mask to hide their insecurities. Try to see them in another light and you will feel compassion towards them. By choosing to respond in an empathetic and non-aggressive way to an unpleasant person, you will be giving yourself a gift first of all. Easy to say…
Furthermore, the training courses that companies prepare for the ISF should also include adequate training both for the prevention and for the management of violence. The training should also include the teaching of techniques for prevention and the management of workers' stress.
Inspired by the works of Guido Serchielli Professor in Work psychology
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