Conflict management styles and their effectiveness

Conflict Management Solution

Conflict

Conflict can be defined as a disagreement between two or more persons or groups on any particular issue/issues. It is a situation in which one person or group perceives that its interests are opposed by other person or group.

Conflict Management Strategies in Health Care

Conflicts in the health care profession are a lot more complicated than any other conflicts because these involve the complex emotional relationships (Behman, 1998). Different management styles and conflict resolution strategies can be used to solve the conflicts. Five different styles of handling conflict management strategies (Singh, 2008) include dominating, obliging, avoiding, compromising, and integrating.

It is very essential for the nurse leaders to be familiar with these conflict management styles as their way of solving conflicts impacts on interpersonal dynamics and the patient care. The paper will discuss a conflict situation faced during the practice and the management strategies used to solve the conflict.

Conflict Situation

One of the recent conflict situations that I faced recently was a conflict between two nurses and a patient. As a nurse leader I was held responsible to manage and resolve this conflict in appropriate manner.

The problem arose when a patient reached to the reception desk for taking token when the entire tokens for his desired doctor had already been issued. He requested and then forced the receptionist to give token as his child was very sick. The receptionist called the supervisor nurse who after listening to patient's problem allowed receptionist to give him a token.

When the nurse assisting the doctor was provided the record file of the patient, she refused to accept it because all the tokens had already been issued. The patient's father brought supervisor nurse to the assisting nurse to make her understand that supervisor nurse allowed him to meet doctor. This situation resulted in serious conflict between assistant nurse and supervisor nurse. Supervisor nurse explained assistant nurse the case of the sick child and her rights to allow tokens in such cases. The assistant nurse on the other side argued that she had strict orders from doctor, not to accept any extra tokens as doctor had to leave on time for another hospital.

Conflict Resolution

Supervisor nurse brought this issue to my room and being a nurse manager/leader, it was my duty to solve the conflict. The most important thing for me at that time was the patient care and to solve the problem of the patient who confused and frustrated. Keeping in mind the compromising strategy, I phoned the doctor and requested him to make a compromise and see one extra patient today. The doctor agreed to do it and asked assistant nurse to accept the file. This was just the one adjustment and not the complete resolution of conflict.

Next, I called both nurses in my room and explained them to learn integrating with each other in order to avoid the problem. The supervisor nurse must ask the assistant nurse to take approval from doctor before giving any extra token. Both the nurses agreed to the solution and conflict was resolved peacefully by me as a nurse manager without creating further complications.