Nursing Focus on Conflict Engagement

by Holly Hayes

The American Nurse, the official publication of the American Nurses Association, published the article The Art of Engagement: Nurses, ANA work to address conflict. Here is an excerpt:

Engage in conflict? Many nurses would rather head for the hills, or at least down the hall. But at Gundersen Lutheran Health System, nurses are being asked to face conflict head on to create a better workplace and ensure safer patient care.

“In general, nurses would rather avoid conflict,” said Rebecca Inglis, MSN, RN, patient education clinical practice nurse at Gundersen, located in La Crosse, WI. “So we’ve become very adept at creating and doing work-arounds.”

Conflict can stem from a disagreement over a patient’s treatment plan, worker scheduling, or having differing values, for example.

According to Inglis and other nurses familiar with the phenomenon, poor communication is often at the heart of conflict. And that, Inglis said, “puts patients at risk, teamwork at risk, and joy at risk.”

Read the full article here. For information on nurses’ experiences with disruptive behavior in the workplace, see our post here.

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Holly Hayes is a mediator at Karl Bayer, Dispute Resolution Expert where she focuses on mediation of health care disputes. Holly holds a B.A. from Southern Methodist University and a Masters in Health Administration from Duke University. She can be reached at holly@karlbayer.com.