Management of Conflicts in a Health Care Center

Running head; MANAGEMENT OF CONFLICTS IN A HEALTH CARE CENTER 1
CONFLICTS MANAGEMENT IN A CLINICAL SETTING
Name
Affiliate institution
Date

MANAGEMENT OF CONFLICTS IN HEALTH CARE CENTERS 2
Introduction
It’s very normal to have conflicts in organizations because people with different opinions
and interests meet to work together. Healthcare centers face more conflicts because there are so
many people interacting, nurses and patients, conflicts occur between patients and staff and also
among the staff. There are also personal conflicts when improper decisions are made. All
organizations should have always have set methods of handling conflicts because they always
happen. This paper is going to discuss a conflict that occurred between staff that was a charge
nurse and nurse xy. (Pavlakis et al 2015).
Conflict; there was a conflict between nurse xy and a charge nurse. The charge nurse
complained that nurse xy was not willing to take instructions given by the charge nurse. For the
seven months that the charge nurse had been in that position, nurse xy has never been
cooperative and sometimes she reports that she won’t make for her shift when it’s already late.
She suggested that nurse xy seems to hate her and extends that to work. This conflict led to a
quarrel between the two parties and also disrupted ongoing duties at that moment because the
quarrel attracted the attention of everyone around there.
The nurse claimed that the charge nurse was always rude to her verbally and non-
verbally and she always wanted to overwork her. Nurse xy confessed that the charge nurse
treated everyone horribly and their difference started when nurse xy complained about how the
charge nurse was treating patients by using abusive language to patients and treating them
without respect.

MANAGEMENT OF CONFLICTS IN HEALTH CARE CENTERS 3
Factors that contributed to the conflict
The two conflicting parties agreed to give their reasons that led to the conflict; each was assigned
with different personnel to give their views. Separating them helped in making them tell the
truth. The following were the various reasons given by the parties.
 A poor general relationship between staff members – it was disclosed that many staff
members do not relate well as partners. Some work under the same groups but they don’t
talk directly to each other unless it’s very necessary. For example, the conflicting parties
were attending their duties under the same team but had stayed in tension and hatred for
seven months.
 Differing opinions when undertaking their lines of duty – it’s always normal to have
different methods of performing a certain duty but ethical workers try to amortize their
differences and decide how to perform a given task. Legal ways are always the best.
Nurse xy was not happy the way the charge nurse was performing her duties because she
was rude to everyone including the patients.
 Poor methods of communication – where there is a bad relationship between staff,
poor communications must arise. Cases were people have differences; it becomes hard to
communicate effectively which consequently leads to poor performance at work. In
addition, the claim that the charge nurse always uses abusive language to her fellow staff
and patients.

MANAGEMENT OF CONFLICTS IN HEALTH CARE CENTERS 4
 Unskilled methods of solving personal differences – it’s always advisable to avoid
taking personal differences to the workplace and in case there are problems arising
between employees, they should try to solve them at personal levels. The charge nurse
and nurse xy should have settled their differences at personal levels before it extended to
other levels because they lacked proper skills of settling their problems
 Gossips – there were allegations that nurse xy had been gossiping the charge nurse with
her colleagues at work. Staff should be trained to respect each other and correct them
where they do mistakes instead of gossiping because they can’t change anything.
 Failure of administration to solve matters which have been reported to them by staff
nurse xy had reported the unethical behavior of the charge nurse to the manager but there
was no action taken which resulted to a conflict in future. The management should be
careful in the performance of their duties to ensure that they do ignore what is being
reported to them. Negligence has its own consequences.
Measures of immediate resolutions to the conflict
As the nurses’ supervisor, the problem was reported to me immediately because both
parties were under my working team, therefore I had to take some measures to stop the quarrels
and solve the differences between the two parties immediately to avoid the distraction of work
and terror in patients. The following are the measures I took to resolve the conflict. ( Daly,
Jackson, Mannix, Davidson, & Hutchinson, 2014).