Main Causes of Conflicts
A conflict in a healthcare organization can be defined as the dispute or the disagreement that may occur among the healthcare nurses mainly due to a variety of reasons. This may involve occurrence of complexes, inappropriate communication techniques, unprofessional behavior and also due to the absence of proper theoretical knowledge and also practical knowledge (Chan, Sit & Lau, 2014). The essay beneath will mainly focus on the conflict episodes that had taken in a hospital. It will also highlight the mian causes for such conflicts and will also ensure the strategies which can reduce the chance of conflicts in the near future.
A recent concern had been raised among the hospital authortities mainly due to the various issues that are being reported by not only healthcare staffs to the complaint cell but also by the patients and their family members. An example should be highlighted in this context in order to shed more light on the issue. Recently, an issue had been raised of improper service delivery claimimg that the patients are not properly treated with misses in medication, the daily activities managementof patients, dressing, wound care and others. When the nursing authority held up a research to find out the main reasons of the improper service delivery, they found that often delegation is not properly conducted and that resulted in many misses in medication and proper delivery of care. When the nursing managers were called in to the meeting, it was seen that each and every nurses were blamimg each other for the misconducts and issues in service delivery. After that day, several meetings have been called by the higher authorities to discuss the issues among the nurses, but everytime it had led to a chaotic situation. Ultimately the hospital authority was failing miserably every time to handle the conflicts that rose from improper communication, absence of proper bonding among the nurses, effective leadership and also improper knowledge and skills about nursing. Delegation was a severe issue that was also found to be one of the major concern as most of the service issue was related to delegation episodes mainly.
The main reason for the occurrence of the conflict was mainly due to lack of proper communication among the the healthcare nurses. This was mainly said so because of the various cases reported, it was seen that there had been lack of complete communication procedure which resulted in issues in delegation procedures. In most cases, important imformation was not communicated to the delegate or the nurses or the nurses undertaking the job has not clearly clarified their concern. The main issues associated with the delegation process were the absence of the proper communicative skills and also the presence of severe ego clashes mainly among the senior nurses. They were not comfortable in asking for details when taking the responsibility of a patient from a junior nurse. Researches show that often failure in proper leadership skills prevents the development of proper bonding among the nurses giving spaces to ego, insecurity, superiority, inferiority and many others (Jung & Kang, 2014). This often acts as barriers during the times of proper delegation. Many researchers are also of the opinion that issues and conflicts leading to improper service delivery like those being the absence of proper nursing skills both theoretical and practical that will guide the nurse in gaining her different expertsies with growing years. This conflicts are mainly interpersoinal conflicts where there is disagreement among two nurses to carry on with an intervention after delegation to another (Cherry & Jacob, 2016). This is also an interpersonal conflict where egoclashes and lack of proper communication skills within a nurses is threatening a person to death.
The Different Stages of Conflict
There are mainly four stages of conflict that can be noted here. Finkelman had described the stages which help in dissection of the concept of a conflict so that a clear understsnding of the concept exists. Latent stage of the conflict mainly involes the anticipation of conflict where different factors are predicted that contributes to the chance of occurremce of the conflicts (Finkelman, 2015). The case scenario, when properly analysed had shown that the absence of proper communication skills and lack of nursing skills and knowledge about proper delegation method are the main contributing factors.. The nurses were already anticipating that their communicating skills could arise many issues and chances were high that barriers would one day create conflicts among nurses that would hamper service delivery by breaches in proper conductance of nursing interventions and also in delegation.
Another stage is called the perceived conflict where an individual staff may be aware that a conflict is present but is not discussed in details. This stage is often important as it helps the staff to understand whether a conflict is present, what is known about the conflict and also how such conflict can be resolved. The nurses were egoistic and they knew very well that they do not share a very good bond with each other. They were completely aware of the fact that the absence of proper communication among them, and also their complexes made it inevitable that conflicts will arise soon at the workplace.
The third stage mainly follows the Felt conflict where the staffs feel mainly stressed due to the presence of the conflict. Strategies need to applied here like avoidance to avoid the conflict. Many researchers suggest that avoidance in most cases bring out negative effects as the conflicts do not get resolved and come out to be more complicated. Rather people should come forward an try to resolve it. In this case, inspite of feeling that a conflict may arise, each and every member have tried to avoid the situation rather than deciding to discuss and solving the issues and conflicts which have in turn resulted in prevention of proper service delivery to patients.
This is followed by manifest conflict stage which can be both destructive and also constructive. Destructive responses mainly involve policy ignorance, problem denial, avoiding a staff members and others. Constructive behavior involve providing encouragement to a group for identification of the issue and thereby solve a problem, offering help to staff members and also expressing appropriate feelings (Marziali et al., 2014). For resolution of the issue, managment have not shown proper leadership skills that would involve constructive behavior and therefore the staffs made the conflict more grave by being ignorant and exhibiting destructive behaviors.
Strategies to Improve Communication and Relationship Building
In order to resolve the issues that the hospital is facing right now, the leaders of the organization and also the nursing mentors and leaders should first try to establish discipline in work followed by introduction of proper communication skills. This can be established among nurses by making them participate in workshops explaining the advantages and correct procedures for effective communication (Johansen & Cadmus, 2015). Moreover the leaders should also stress on relationship building among the different workers which could be dine through effective communication, involoving staffs in decision making, holding them accountable, making reliable promises and also advice them to be responsible by providing shared tasks. Making each other indentify their strengths and encourage each other would help in diminishing the ego clashes and any type of complexes that exist (Moreland & Apker, 2016). In case of knowledge and skill development for performance in different fields like holding critical treatments, maintaining nursing morals and ethics, conducting delegation and others, one must not only follow theoretical knolwdge but also should go through severe evidence based nursing studies that would help them to be more skillful (Baiilien et al. 2014). Moreover, it should be inculcated in them that they are serving the nations and therefore they tend to be provide the best quality life to the patients overcoming any barriers and hard feeings, gaps in knowledge and skill. Moreover they should also consult experienced mentors to help them in their periods of stress and confusion (Ellis & Bach, 2015).
Delegation was also one of the associated issue that was observed to have resulted from ineffective communication process. Delegation which often tends to unburden a nurse from work that could be done by others under the forners’ nurses accountability, requires kills. This delegation process mainly depends on the personality, communication skill and also the cooperative approach amoing the healthcare staffs. Delegation mainly depends on the two way mutual relationship of respect and trust among nurses. As in the recent case scenario, it was evaluated through the application of previous incidents where the qualities mentioned to perform effective delegation were mostly absent that resu;lted in failed attemps and also compromised the service quality. Nurses tended to become apprehensive about their inferiority, superiority, insecurity and several other complexes along with complete absence of effective communication and maintenance of proper relation among the co-workers. The dynamic exchange between the staffs require constant evaluation, feedback and lastly modification to meet patient care goals but such exchanges were totally absent which led to failures in delegation and thereby leading to complete failre in service delivery (Huber et al., 2013).
Importance of Knowledge and Skill Development
Conflicts among the nurses of the team not only hampers service quality in collaborative activities, delegation, communication and providing quality care for the patients but also irreparably damage the team morale if not handled properly. The nurse manager can effectively transform these conflicts into incidents that can act as an opportunity for learning and also growth as an individual. As the leader she should take initiatives of conflicting parties together to make it clear to them that all must work together for a resolution of different issues. She can accomplish this by the establishment of different ground rules for carrying out discussions. She should alos ensure that all parties have a large number of opportunities to speak out their greivamnces amd should also remind them that their main goal is to provide a quality care to the patients at the highest level. The leader must also introduce different strategies to enhance communication so that the gaps in services can be overcome. All must work together with harmony to overcome conflicts and provide best quality care.
One can easily notice how situations within a healthcare sectors may get worsened due to inappropriate communication and proper management skills not only in service care delivery, pastoperative maibtenace of patients, medication, delegation and and in other fields of service delivery as well. These conflicts in workplace may be due to various factors like lack of knowledge and skills in the expertise of the nurse or lack in effective communication techniques. It may also be due to various types of complexes and ego clashes which harbor in nurses when there is absence of priper relationship development between them. Therefore it becomes a responsobilty of the authority along with the nursing leaders and managers to look over the issues and produce srtaegies to handle such conflicts egffectively. A healthcare organization which influences proper bonds among the nurses along with developemt of proper communication skills would definitely ensure better collaborative service delivery for the patients from the staffs.
References:
Baillien, E., Bollen, K., Euwema, M., & De Witte, H. (2014). Conflicts and conflict management styles as precursors of workplace bullying: A two-wave longitudinal study. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 23(4), 511-524.
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Chan, J. C., Sit, E. N., & Lau, W. M. (2014). Conflict management styles, emotional intelligence and implicit theories of personality of nursing students: A cross-sectional study. Nurse education today, 34(6), 934-939.
Cherry, B., & Jacob, S. R. (2016). Contemporary nursing: Issues, trends, & management. Elsevier Health Sciences.
Ellis, P., & Bach, S. (2015). Leadership, management and team working in nursing. Learning Matters.
Finkelman, A. (2015). Leadership and management for nurses: Core competencies for quality care. Pearson.
Huber, D. (2013). Leadership and nursing care management. Elsevier Health Sciences.
Johansen, M. L., & Cadmus, E. (2015). Conflict management style, supportive work environments and the experience of work stress in emergency nurses. Journal of nursing management.
Jung, M., & Kang, H. (2014). Nursing students’ self esteem, assertiveness and interpersonal relationship according to their style of conflict management. Journal of Korean Academic Society of Nursing Education, 20(3), 345-352.
Marziali, E., Mackenzie, C. S., & Tchernikov, I. (2014). Acceptability of an e-learning program to help nursing assistants manage relationship conflict in nursing homes. American journal of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, 1533317514551482.
Moreland, J. J., & Apker, J. (2016). Conflict and stress in hospital nursing: Improving communicative responses to enduring professional challenges. Health communication, 31(7), 815-823.
Yoder-Wise, P. S. (2014). Leading and managing in nursing. Elsevier Health Sciences.
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