Nursing and Conflict Conflict Management

Conflict Management: Nursing Not all conflict is necessarily bad. Conflicts can be productive and bring to light difficult but important issues. This was the case at my workplace when one younger nurse raised objections to the ways in which less experienced nurses were being treated by more experienced nurses. This phenomenon is often called “nurses eating their young,” horizontal violence, or workplace hazing.

However, new nurses are often uncertain how to deal with this, given they may fear for their job security or may even believe that they are less competent than their qualifications and training suggests. A common method of conflict resolution in such an instance is avoidance, or pretending that no conflict exists (Sportsman and Hamilton, 2007). Unfortunately, this can simply result in more aggressive behavior on the part of the bully.

“The consequences of bullying include nurses reporting poorer mental health, decreased collaboration with team members, ineffective communication, reduced work productivity, and poor job commitment” (Gillespie, et al., 2017, par.4). Furthermore, avoidance is seldom effective, because it may mean that the underlying reasons for the conflict may be ignored. In the case of horizontal violence, this may include stress levels, inadequate staffing, inadequate training, and poor protocols to prevent errors. Other methods of conflict resolution include accommodation and compromise. Accommodation means merely conceding to the wishes of the requester.

Again, this may result in an immediate dissipation of the conflict in the short run, but in the long run does not necessarily address the underlying issues. Compromise is the style often encouraged by outside nursing managers, in which one party will be asked to give up something while the other similarly concedes something of equal value.

For example, if the conflict between two nurses was over the fact that newer nurses were required to work more holidays and undesirable shifts, reducing the number of required night shifts or major holidays for new staff might be one way to deal with this problem. The main downside to compromise is that neither party is usually entirely happy with the settlement. It may also ignore the deeper issues at the heart of the conflict, such as a lack of respect for new nurses.

Ideally, however, the best solution to conflict resolution is collaboration, or when the conflicting parties enter into an agreement to generate a better solution. Reducing the stresses upon both new and experienced nurses should be ideal. For example, generating an orientation program where new nurses are paired with older nurse mentors can enhance team bonding and also potentially generate new bonds between the two groups.

Hiring more nurses in general to ensure that new nurses are not excessively burdened by the negative consequences of working long shifts and holidays may be helpful. Regardless, having a mediator or a facilitator who can negotiate in an impartial fashion between groups is very useful. Workplaces have had success with bullying education programs, which can also invest nurses themselves with conflict management tools (Gillespie, et al., 2017).

Workplaces must make conflict mitigation a goal and have permanent mechanisms in place to reduce the impact of conflict on the daily lives of.