Manage Healthcare Conflict / Resolution by Negotiation

Caught in the Middle? How to Manage Conflict and Resolve Problems by Negotiating with Others

Once conflict is approached as a cooperative effort, nurses, physicians, administrators and other healthcare professionals can restructure trust to enhance professional relationships. By understanding the dynamics of negotiation in areas such as leadership, power, and conflict management, healthcare professionals will improve the quality of their professional practice, relationships and their working environment.

Hospitals and large healthcare organizations are complex structures with an overriding mission to improve the healthcare of patients and the community. Unfortunately, this lofty goal encounters interference from the numerous conflicting agendas, goals or value systems of the various professional disciplines and individuals within the healthcare system. Professionals who are, or should be, working together to provide healthcare services to patients experience conflicts and must develop core skill competencies for leadership, effective communication, negotiation, consensus building and conflict management. These essential leadership skills are needed for personal, professional, and organizational success.

When conflict arises, we naturally look to leaders for resolution. Effective leaders, however, understand that their jobs are not merely to “fix things” but rather to equip others to creatively manage their own conflicts and thus develop their skills. Leadership is more than a position on an organizational chart; it is a learned skill that is best developed when it is shared.

Conflict in the healthcare industry presents some unique challenges simply because there are so many people involved in the delivery of services, making it impossible for any one provider to have total control over decisions affecting patient care. Because of this dynamic, conflicts surface, calling for negotiation skills. If managed well, the conflict can be resolved constructively. If not managed well, the conflict may result in disaster.

This article presents an overview of conflict resolution by introducing: