Breaking the Cycle of Abuse in Nursing: Teaching Nursing Students Conflict Resolution

The cycle of abuse is a social theory originally applied to domestic relations involving 1,500 battered women. The four steps in the cycle of abuse may be applied to nursing conflicts: 1) tensions build, 2) an incident occurs, 3) reconciliation takes place, and 4) and calm returns (Walker, 1979). And much the same way as the cycle of abuse needs a therapeutic mileu to be broken, nursing conflicts need interventions to stop (Clark, 2013). At a midwest university, 88 senior baccalaureate nursing students were asked to write narratives of a nursing conflict observed during the period enrolled as a nursing student. Only one student expressed the inability to think of an observation of a nursing conflict. The student conflict narratives written were placed into two categories: 1) conflicts observed in nursing practice, and 2) conflicts observed in nursing education. After the narratives were written and submitted, a class was given on nursing engagement, conflict and the alternative dispute resolution (Kritek, 2012). The students were asked to apply the alternative dispute resolution to their narrative of a nursing conflict and determine how the end of the conflict may have changed by using the alternative dispute resolution. All of the students were successfully applied the alternative dispute resolution and resolved the nursing conflict observed. These narratives on nursing conflict written by nursing students indicated that nursing conflict was observed and internalized by nursing students. And that without intervention, the internalized nursing conflict remains unresolved and may continue to cycle and be expressed later during nursing practice by the same students. By providing the students with a tool to resolve conflict, the observed conflict was resolved, and the cycle of abuse that could have started was broken. It is important that practicing nurses, nurse educators, nurse administrators, and nursing students be provided with tools to resolve conflict and the support to use them. In this way, the conflict that exists within nursing may begin to be resolved.