Assignment Instructions
Situation
You are a graduating student of nursing applying for a graduate position at a health care facility in Australia. One of the selection criteria to be completed as part of the application focuses on conflict management within a nursing context. Complete the selection criteria as instructed below.
Task
Using contemporary literature to inform and support your writing, critically discuss 2 strategies a GRN (graduate Registered Nurse) could use to effectively manage intra professional (nurse to nurse) conflict in a clinical environment.
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The discussion should include justifications of how the selected conflict management strategies are realistic for a GRN and will enable both conflict resolution and team cohesion.
Strategies a GRN (graduate Registered Nurse) could use to effectively manage intra professional (nurse to nurse) conflict in a Clinical Environment – Sample Answer
Managing Conflict Resolution
Workplace conflict is highly common in any work environment. In healthcare organization, there is likelihood of experiencing inter-professional which happens between two individuals of different medical professional; physicians and nurses. There is also a likelihood of experiencing intra-professional conflict which happened between two individuals of the same professional; two nurses.
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This paper focuses on exploring intra-professional conflict among Graduate Registered Nurses (GRN). GRN are regarded to be highly educated nurses, and hence they should possess high ability to resource inter-personal conflict, using the most productive conflict resolution strategies. This article discusses two main strategies that can be used by GRN.
Inter-Professional Conflict among Graduate Registered Nurses
Conflict is a common occurrence in different life situation, and it is always present in the individuals, within an organization and between individuals. Conflict is regarded as a disagreement, where in, parties perceive a risk to their concerns, interests or needs (Leksell, Gardulf, Nilsson & Lepp, 2015). Conflict is the aggressive determination for a preferred results which, if achieved, it hinders the attainment of others own favoured result. It is similar to a process where person feels that personal interests are being negatively affected or disputed by another person. Conflict is a very complex occurrence (Alshammari & Dayrit, 2017). Nurses experience intra-professional conflict. Intra-professional conflict happens when workers in the same professional interfere or frustrate each other’s efforts to attain goals. Some of intra-professional conflict includes disagreeing on different issues, use of harsh language such as profanity, yelling, or threats, disruptive conduct, communication breakdown, or blaming.
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Nursing team conflicts might be constructively perceived when employed to clarify disagreement and misunderstandings about tasks and roles. Unconstructive conflicts among nursing team can change team communication and dynamics, reduce team performance and trust, and result to poor mental health among nurses (Cullati et al., 2019). According to de Wit, Greer and Jehn (2012), team conflict might draw attention of nurses away from patient care and deprive their personal resources, creating a risk to the safety climate of the team, and eventually the patient quality of care. Intra-professional conflict may be the consequence of excessive work stress, poor communication or unresolved competing tasks priorities (Patton, 2014). This conflict may in turn possess harmful impacts on workers which include reduction in nurses’ job satisfaction. Inter-professional conflict is also associated with higher degree of nurses’ burnout, and higher levels of medical errors, which means reduction in individual GRN efficiency and work competence (Jerng et al., 2017).
Conflict Management Strategy
There are a number of strategies that GRN can use to manage intra-professional conflict. The two main strategies that will be discussed in this paper include compromising strategy and collaborating strategy. According to Moisoglou et al. (2014) compromising is a lose-lose strategy, where every side has to give up an important part of interest. Compromising can be selected as a temporal solution for a complex issue. Compromised was found to be the most common overall used workplace conflict resolving style by nursing. This means it is among the most effective form of nurse-nurse conflict resolution in healthcare environment (Iglesis & Vallejo, 2012). According to Alshammari and Dayrit (2017), compromising centres on swift, mutually agreeable decision which partly satisfies both players. It normally happens when there is exchange and negotiation, and it eventually promotes constructive form of communication, eliminating harsh language and words. In Johansen (2012) views nurse managers often utilize compromise as a basic style for conflict management. Compromise is mostly found to be used by to resolve conflict between nurses in the same level of competency, especially the educated nurses with higher positions in the department such as management or supervision. In a situation where two nurses of different competence level conflict, the junior ones tend to use avoidance (Bajwa et al., 2019). However, this is a style never or hardly adopted by highly educated nurses. Compromise strategy is likely to bring a balance in nursing team, where all team members will learn to compromise by finding a common ground they can all work with. By compromising, nurses get to learn from each other and to value each other contribution, especially where the opted common ground seems to offer better results than expected (Kaitelidou et al., 2012). This will promote respect among the nursing team members, reducing the chances for future conflict among nurses and enhancing consideration of each other’s view in handling problems.
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Collaborating strategy is a win-win approach where every party demonstrates respect to the values and ideas of the opposite side so as to establish a solution which satisfies both parties. In a research conducted by Lahana et al. (2017) nurses conflict management strategy, collaborating strategy was found to be used by post graduate and graduate registered nurses, relating level of education with a more efficacious, mature, and appropriate conflict management approach. This strategy is mostly used in a situation where the conflicting individuals respect value and knowledge of the opponent (Baddar, Salem & Villagracia, 2016). Collaborative strategy is regarded as one of the best practice in nurse-nurse conflict management. According to Mayfield (2018), teamwork and collaboration is a demonstration of nursing aptitude, which when augmented, it will enhance the work environment and yield to improved patient health and safety. Collaborative promote effective communication, which does not only aid in conflict management, but also future conflict avoidance. Collaborative strategy is likely to bring nursing team together, making it easy for them to work as a team and to depend on each other contribution in solving future conflicts (Goff, 2018).
Conclusion
Collaborative and compromising strategies for conflict resolution are selected as the best strategies to resolve conflict among GRN in an organization. GNRs are well educated individuals, with high knowledge in different work practice. Based on their level of knowledge, these nurses are anticipated to easily come into a consensus in case of a conflict, where they will either compromise part of what they each wants, to have a common ground, or will integrate the knowledge through collaboration. Either way, they are able to resolve conflict in a more reliable way, which is likely to initiate respect and effective communication between them.
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