A short informatic about resolving conflict in the nursing profession. Pertinent for new nurses and older nurses, as well as other healthcare professionals.

1. Conflicts in Nursing
by Christine Bauman
Nursing Role and Scope
Earnest
HIRRE

2. “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).

3. 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)

4. 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).

5. 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).

6. Application to Nursing Practice
Conflict: 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.

7. 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.

8. 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).

9. 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).

10. 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).

11. Commit to Changes
The 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.

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. References
Brinkert, 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.