Paper
Saturday, July 14, 2007
This presentation is part of : Strategies to Implement EBN
Effective Conflict Management: One Key to Successful Collaborative Practice
Tova Hendel, RN, PhD, Nursing Department, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
Learning Objective #1: describe research findings related to strategies used by nurses and physicians in conflict management.
Learning Objective #2: discuss the implications of effectively handling conflicts on promoting inter-professional collaboration.
Background: In today's complex  health care organizations, conflicts between physicians and nurses occur daily. Researchers have identified collaboration as one of the intervening variables that may help explain the relationship between magnet hospitals and positive patients' outcomes and claim that conflict has a beneficial effect on work group function. Consequently, organizational conflict has grown into a major subfield of organizational behavior and health professionals face the challenges of developing skills in effectively handling conflicts and promoting inter-professional collaboration. Collaboration, according to the Thomas and Kilman model of conflict resolution, involves a high level of concern for others (cooperativeness), as well as a high concern for self (assertiveness).

Aim: Identify and compare conflict mode choices used by physicians and head nurses in acute care hospitals and examine relationship with background characteristics.

Methods: Physicians (n=75) and head nurses (n=54) in 5 hospitals were surveyed, using the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument.

Results: No difference was found between physicians and head nurses in their choice of the most frequent mode used in conflict management. The compromising mode was found to be the significantly most commonly used mode (p=.00) by both. The collaborating mode was significantly more frequent in use among head nurses (p=.001)  and was found to be the least frequent mode used by physicians (p=.00). Most of the respondents' characteristics were not found correlated with choice of strategy, apart from ward size (p=.010) for physicians and tenure in position (p=.032) for head nurses.

Conclusions: Physicians and head nurses tend to choose a conflict handling mode which is concerned a form of a Lose-Lose approach. Findings indicate a need to enhance partnerships in the clinical environment to ensure quality patient care and staff satisfaction. The responsibility falls on nurse managers to create a culture that values and rewards collegial nurse/physician relationships, based on equal power environment.

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