Conflicts in Nursingby Christine Bauman

Nursing Role and ScopeEarnestHIRRE

“Conflict is an interactive process manifested as incompatibility, disagreements, or dissonance within or between entities such as individuals” (Losa Iglesias and Becerro).

Conflict is an inevitable part of life.

When the conflict is extreme, sabotage and violence can appear within the group (Vivar).

Sources of Conflict in Nursing

Conflict occurs in the Nursing Profession

- Between Nurses and other Nurses

- Between Nurses and other Healthcare Professionals

- Between Nurses and Patients and their Family (Brinkert)

Conflict Resolution Strategies

“Among the clinical nurses, the accommodating,

avoiding, and competing styles were seen more

often than the compromising or collaborating,

which suggests that a concern for others

predominates over a concern for personal

outcomes” (Losa Iglesias and Becerro).

Supervisors and managers often use competition, compromise, and collaboration (Vivar).

You might need a mirror to help with your conflicts

For the nurse, the most important aspect of conflict resolution is to have a very clear self-perception for recognizing his or her own, individual conflict resolution techniques (Losa Iglesias and Becerro).

These resolution techniques are used to navigate ambiguous situations in the patient care environment.

“There is no appropriate or inappropriate strategy to deal with conflict. Time availability, context, culture and type of personality should be taken into account to resolve conflict” (Vivar).

Application to Nursing PracticeConflict: The dying patient that needs comfort.

Accommodating: You go above and beyond to be the family and friends that the patient does not seem to have right now.

Avoiding: You do everything you can to stay away from that patient so you don’t have to see her pass or you don’t have to face your inner feelings about death and dying.

Application to Nursing Practice

Conflict: You, the nurse, disagree with how a pediatric patient’s parents are handling their child’s medical situation.

Accommodating: You go above and beyond to provide the caring and nurturing that you think they fail to provide, and you are internally upset about it.

Avoiding: You refuse to acknowledge the situation and

conflict, and do not become involved.

Competitive: You actively argue with the parents about

what care they should be providing for their child.

Some Interventions for Resolving Nursing Conflicts

First and foremost:Build your hospital out of good communication

Communication quality between nurses and other healthcare professionals is better in hospitals that have good retention of nurses (Brinkert).

Nurses are more motivated to resolve issues when they are respected as being autonomous, able to collaborate with physicians, and where effective interpersonal communication and conflicts were dissolved constructively (Brinkert).

Fostering a Conflict-Free Workplace

Nursing Mentorship programs have been shown to be helpful for decreasing conflict between new nurses older nurses (Brinkert).

These programs also help to lighten the workload of the more experienced nurse while fostering confidence in the new nurses (Brinkert).

Managerial Support

An open and collaborative communication between nurses and their supervisors can help to navigate ambiguity in the care environment. This helps newer nurses develop confidence and job satisfaction, which decreases turnover (Brinkert).

Teaching charge nurses about conflict management strategies can significantly decrease stress (Brinkert).

Commit to ChangesThe introduction of new roles and protocols into a department or

specialty of nursing can have positive effects on conflict management (Brinkert).

For example, a pediatric floor might allow Nurse Practitioners to practice there, which might encourage interested nurses to seek further education.

Training all nurses to become charge nurses including education on conflict resolution will often reduce conflict in the workplace (Brinkert).

After attending a training class, the future nursing leader might be more willing to hear another nurse’s perspective on a conflict situation.

Nursing Professional Organizations

Professional Nursing Organizations can be used a means of informing nurses about different effective management styles and techniques for conflict resolution (Losa Iglesias and Becerro). These organizations are instrumental for newer and more experienced nurses to be exposed to information regarding better and more effective practice, and they reach nurses at all practice settings.

In general, “job satisfaction is enhanced by group cohesiveness, mutual interests, and common objectives such as change commitment, the promotion of job satisfaction helps foster internal positive job attitudes and intrinsic motivation that helps to reach a more effective and efficient service to customers” (Yang). In the case of nursing, the members are us, the nursing staff, the customers are our clients, but this principle of job satisfaction still holds true.

Nurses want to work as part of the healthcare team. Nurses need to be aware of conflict resolution to foster the best parts of team caring.

ReferencesBrinkert, R. (2010). A literature review of conflict communication causes, costs, benefits and interventions in nursing.Journal Of Nursing Management, 18(2), 145-156. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2834.2010.01061.x

Losa Iglesias, M. E., & Becerro de Bengoa Vallejo, R. (2012). Conflict resolution styles in the nursing profession. Contemporary Nurse, 43(1), 73-80. doi:10.5172/conu.2012.43.1.73

Vivar, C. G. (2006). Putting conflict management into practice: a nursing case study. Journal Of Nursing Management, 14(3), 201-206.

Yang, Y. (2014). Transformational leadership in the consumer service workgroup: competing models of job satisfaction, change commitment, and cooperative conflict resolution. Psychological Reports, 114(1), 33-49.