Leadership and Management: Nursing Conflict Report Analysis

This report delves into the complexities of workplace conflict within a nursing context, focusing on a specific case involving a missed medication dose and interpersonal issues between nurses and a physician in an Australian hospital. It examines the negative outcomes of such conflicts, including reduced patient care quality and employee dissatisfaction, highlighting the role of leadership in managing these situations. The report analyzes the impact of an autocratic leadership style and the adoption of avoidance strategies by the manager. It emphasizes the importance of effective communication and the need for transformational or participative leadership styles to address employee needs and foster job satisfaction. The report provides recommendations, including providing full support to employees, understanding their needs, maintaining positive behavior, treating all employees equally, and implementing adequate leadership at healthcare organizations. It concludes by emphasizing the importance of conflict management to increase productivity and teamwork, and to avoid future risks within the workplace.

Clinical leadership and management in nursing

Running Head: Report
Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................2
Description of the conflict situation.............................................................................................................3
Job role........................................................................................................................................................5
Measures.....................................................................................................................................................5
Role of leadership........................................................................................................................................6
Outcomes.....................................................................................................................................................7
Changes.......................................................................................................................................................8
Key Recommendations................................................................................................................................8
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................8
References.................................................................................................................................................10
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Introduction
This report is written with intent to gain the understanding of the conflicts within the workplace
in the field of nursing. The concept of workplace conflict is explained with the help of the event
or situation. The report consists of many sections such as the description of the situation,
strategies to resolve the conflicts, role of leadership and recommendations. The purpose of
writing this report is to find out the role of leadership in managing the conflicts within the
nursing workplace (Karadakal, Goud, & Thomas, 2015).
Conflict is the common problem in entire working environment and this problem occurs because
of the differences in responsibilities, needs, ideas, goals and perception. Conflict within the
workplace leads to low morale, employee dissatisfaction and high employee turnover in the
organizations. The conflict occurs in a complex environment and high risks as the healthcare
and nursing are the fields that are more vulnerable to the conflicts. The conflict within the
workplace can be occurred in three forms including interpersonal, intrapersonal and
organizational conflicts.
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Description of the conflict situation
After the completion of my degree in nursing, I have joined the hospital as a nurse in Australia.
The demand of the nurses continues to rise because of the high turnover rates in the healthcare
organizations. The reason behind the high turnover rates was the low job satisfaction among the
nurses. Some of the other reasons of behind the occurrence of the conflict situation can be the
lack of communication, lack of cooperation, lack of respect and lack of acceptance within the
nursing workplace. The outcomes of the conflict are very negative as it affects the overall quality
of care and job satisfaction of the employees (Sehrawat & Sharma, 2014).
One day, I was performing my duty with five others nurses and suddenly physician came on
round to check the patients and their conditions. There was a patient who was suffering from
Dengue and also a diabetic patient. The physician scolded nurse when he got to know that the
nurse missed one dose of insulin. The nurse was not communicated properly and she was
explaining her point but physician did not listen to her because nurse had the personal issues with
physician as well as the other workers. This type of conflict is the interpersonal conflict and
manager failed to tackle these conflicts and it results into the worse situations of the patient.
It is found that manager of nurses has adopted the autocratic leadership style according to which
he really focused towards work and less attention is paid to the satisfaction of the employees.
The strategy adopted by manager is avoidance strategy according to which he ignored all the
complaints of nurses that directly coming from the nurses regarding the interpersonal problems.
The manager of nurses did not listen about the problems of members and disregarded them
which lead to affect the productivity of nurses negatively. The bad behavior and lack of
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communication is the reason behind of having these interpersonal conflicts at workplace (Erzen
& Armagan, 2015).
It is very important to manage conflict in organization to increase the productivity and
teamwork. From the above case scenario, it is found that the biggest impact of conflicting
situation was on the health of the patient as missing one dose can be the most dangerous activity
as it may result in the death of patients. The previous reports on the conflicts between physician
and nurses also revealed some of the other reasons including power imbalances between
physician and nurse, different goals of practicing medicine and gender conflicts. The manager of
the hospital in Australia has failed to tackle the situation of conflicts because of the adoption of
poor leadership styles. The autocratic leadership style is not suitable according to the situation.
There is a need to change the leadership style for resolving the conflicts in the organization.
According to the previous studies it is found that the nurses within the workplace faced the issue
of power imbalance. Nurses were not given that much important in comparison to the
physician because of the difference in power of positions. Sometimes nurses feel that they also
need attention and they deserve more responsibility and credit in comparison to the physician
(Akpabio, John, Akpan, Akpabio, & Uyanah, 2016).
Moving further, according to the reports of Kathleen and McGhee, it is found that reason behind
the conflict between physician and nurses can the difference in goals. The goal of physician is to
diagnose and treating the disease of patient whereas the nurse is only focused towards the taking
care of the patient. Some of the other researchers also reported that manager spend more than
40% of its time on managing the conflicts of the organization. The management of conflicts
within the workplace is necessary to avoid the future risks within the workplace.
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Job role
My job role was to taking care of the patients and follows all the instructions given by physicians
regarding the doses of patients and much other assistance for patients. I had to perform my duty
in the intensive care unit. There were 20 beds in this unit and 5 nurses were working in every
shift and they all were supervised by the manager of the nurses.
Measures
Some of the measures are also observed for the immediate resolution and it is found that the
leaders are playing the most important role in managing the conflicts. The manager of nurses
should listen very carefully to the nurses and find out the root cause of occurrence of this
conflicting situation within the workplace. It is analyzed that the communication either it’s oral
or team communication playing a very important role in the organizations as it helps to achieve
the coordination among the team and different tasks. Communication is basically a process of
exchanging information between the group of members through the various modes such as oral
and written. I also found that organizations are also making full use of the social media platforms
to convey the information to the people working in the organizations. Some of the measures that
analyzed from the analysis of the situation that ensures the effective conflict resolution and those
measures are:
 Open: There should be proper communication and discussion with regard to the goals so
that everyone understood their roles and responsibilities including nurses.
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 Clarify: There is also need to find out the facts deeply in relation to the issue that exists
in the organization (Guidroz, Perez, & Wang, 2012).
 Develop: At this step, there is a need to discuss about how to effectively resolve the
conflicts.
 Agree: This will help to make everyone convince to agree on particular actions.
 Close: The plan should be built to resolve the conflicts and making sure that everyone in
healthcare organization is performing as per the instructions and also agreed with the
terms to resolve the conflicts (Yufenyuy, 2018).
Role of leadership
The leadership is playing very important role in managing the conflicts as effective leadership is
always results in achieving the success of the health care organizations. It is found that the
leadership approaches are effective to handle the different situations. The transformational theory
is found to be more effective and useful in handling the different situations specially to build the
interpersonal relationships. The transformational leadership theory is very useful to increase the
job satisfaction of the employees by focusing on their needs. The main focus of the leadership is
to encourage and motivate the staff members and also understanding and solving the problems of
leaders. A vision must be clear to all the leaders to resolve the conflicts and creating strategies to
achieve long term goals and objectives (Alshammari & Dayrit, 2017).
From the case scenario situation, it is found that the conflict in the organization occurs because
of lack of communication and leadership style adopted by the manager. From the analysis, it is
found that the leaders need to adopt the transformational leadership styles or participative styles
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and listen carefully about the problems of the employees. The job satisfaction among the
employees can be achieved by fulfilling their needs and demands. The leader has the
responsibility to make use of its personal skills, knowledge and abilities to handle the people in
the organizations. According to personality trait theory, it is found that leaders have the different
personality characteristics or traits which they can make utilized to encourage the employees and
helping them to solve their problems. For example, the missing of dose by nurse was very
serious problem and it needs a proper action that need to be taken by leaders (Shah, 2017).
The managerial behavior needs to be positive in most of the situations. The positive behavior of
managers will result in managing the conflicts in the organizations. With the rapid growth of the
leaders and by reviewing the literature on leadership and conflict management, the leadership
can be equipped to understand what conflict is how it can be managed and the impact of
leadership on conflict situations.
Outcomes
The outcome of the conflicts has a negative impact on the patients as well as nurses. The Bad
behavior and lack of communication is the reason behind of having these interpersonal conflicts
at workplace. Some of the other reasons of behind the occurrence of the conflict situation can be
the lack of communication, lack of cooperation, lack of respect and lack of acceptance within the
nursing workplace. The outcomes of the conflict are very negative as it affects the overall quality
of care and job satisfaction of the employees. Conflict within the workplace leads to low morale,
employee dissatisfaction and high employee turnover in the organizations (Kaimenyi, 2014).
The conflict occurs in a complex environment and high risks as the healthcare and nursing are
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the fields that are more vulnerable to the conflicts. In addition, it is found that the biggest impact
of conflicting situation was on the health of the patient as missing one dose can be the most
dangerous activity as it may result in the death of patients (Almeida, 2017).
Changes
The change that needs to take place as a result of eliminating potential for a similar event to arise
is to improve the communication system in organization. The communication will help in
organization to manage the conflicts. It is found during the case analysis, the conflict occurred
because of the lack of communication between physician and patient as well as between the staff
members and nurse leaders.
Key Recommendations
Some of the important recommendations to resolve the conflicts are listed as below:
 Provide full support and assistance to the employees
 Understand the needs of the employees and also fulfill their needs
 Leaders should maintain the positive behavior
 Treat every employee equally
 Need to implement the adequate leadership at health care organizations (Siitonen, 2009).
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Conclusion
Conflict is the common problem in entire working environment and this problem occurs because
of the differences in responsibilities, needs, ideas, goals and perception. Conflict within the
workplace leads to low morale, employee dissatisfaction and high employee turnover in the
organizations. The conflict occurs in a complex environment and high risks as the healthcare
and nursing are the fields that are more vulnerable to the conflicts. The conflict within the
workplace can be occurred in three forms including interpersonal, intrapersonal and
organizational conflicts. It is very important to manage conflict in organization to increase the
productivity and teamwork. From the above case scenario, it is found that the biggest impact of
conflicting situation was on the health of the patient as missing one dose can be the most
dangerous activity as it may consequence in the death of patients. The outcome of the conflicts
has a negative impact on the patients as well as nurses. From the analysis, it is found that the
leaders need to adopt the transformational leadership styles or participative styles and listen
carefully about the problems of the employees. The job satisfaction among the employees can be
achieved by fulfilling their needs and demands. The leader has the responsibility to make use of
its personal skills, knowledge and abilities to handle the people in the organizations.
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References
Akpabio, I., John, M., Akpan, M., Akpabio, F., & Uyanah, D. (2016). Work-related conflict and
nurses’ role performance ina tertiary hospital in South-south Nigeria. Journal of Nursing
Education and Practice, 6(2), 1-9. Retrieved from
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d14c/c0823e039b2e6f8efa25186edce65b3e8f66.pdf
Almeida, J. (2017). Leadership in conflict management: the case of tourism versus territory
conflict. 104, pp. 25 -37. Retrieved from
http://www.scielo.mec.pt/pdf/fin/n104/n104a03.pdf
Alshammari, H., & Dayrit, R. (2017). Conflict and Conflict Resolution among the Medical and
Nursing Personnel of Selected Hospitals in Hail City. IOSR Journal of Nursing and
Health Science, 6(3), 45-60. Retrieved from
http://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jnhs/papers/vol6-issue3/Version-1/G0603014560.pdf
Erzen, E., & Armagan, Y. (2015). The Effect of Leadership on Conflict Management. Retrieved
from
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273635901_The_Effect_of_Leadership_on_Co
nflict_Management
Guidroz, A., Perez, L., & Wang, M. (2012). Developing a model of source-specific interpersonal
conflict in health care. 28(1), pp. 69-79. Retrieved from
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22259160
Kaimenyi, C. (2014). The Influence of Conflict Management Styles on LeadershipApproaches
withinSmall-scale Businesses. IOSR Journal of Business and Management , 16(9), 55-59.
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Retrieved from http://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jbm/papers/Vol16-issue9/Version-1/
H016915559.pdf
Karadakal, N., Goud, N., & Thomas, P. (2015). Impact of leadership role perspective on conflict
resolution styles - a study on small and medium sized entrepreneurs of Karnataka State in
India. Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research, 5(4). Retrieved from
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40497-015-0019-6
Sehrawat, A., & Sharma , T. (2014). Leadership and Conflict Management Style among
Managers. International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, 5(5), 145-152.
Retrieved from
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b7f8/189a144b9b14865f2824e2c7215fa2d8367a.pdf
Shah, M. (2017). Impact of interpersonal conflict in health care setting on patient care; the role
of nursing leadership style on resolving the conflict. 2(2), pp. 44-46. Retrieved from
https://medcraveonline.com/NCOAJ/NCOAJ-02-00031.pdf
Siitonen, M. (2009). Conflict management and leadership communication inmultiplayer
communities. Retrieved from
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4253/815bfc8481e4e578401ff46cd27b9a0a8ebc.pdf
Yufenyuy, C. (2018). The Impact of Interprofessional Conflict on Quality care –The Nurse’s
Role. Retrieved from https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/149800/My
%20Thesis%20Final%20Version.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
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