Conflict Management and Teamwork

I have been fortunate enough to work in a teaching hospital for over a decade, on a unit that has a strong sense of teamwork. I have watched residents grow from unsure medical students to capable

Teamwork and collaboration in nursing can be defined as the development of partnerships to achieve best possible outcomes that reflect the particular needs of the patient, family, or community, requiring an understanding of what others have to offer. (Giddens & Liesveld, 2013). This means that nurses are constantly working as a team to provide the best care for their patients. Working as part of a team may include listening to the client, getting help from another nurse to verify dosage calculations or working alongside the doctor to carefully facilitate their orders. I don’t believe any one nurse would be effective if they were working by themselves. The profession alone is demanding and one nurse working by themselves to assist the needs of more than one patient at a time would be dangerous.

People work in groups or teams everyday whether in their career, education, political organization, church, or any other social setting. Conflict while working in teams or groups is inevitable. When taking people of different backgrounds, personalities, moral, and ethical beliefs and putting them together in a group, conflict will arise. The key to achieving your team goals is to construct and conquer your goals with keeping the greater good of the team in mind. Conflict as it arises should be combated and abated through swift and thorough resolution techniques. When dealt with properly conflict resolution can give rise to a cohesive and productive team.

Last semester I used this competency a lot and this semester was no different. I was very fortunate to have amazing groups in my last two rotations. During my first rotation this semester, we were able to work as a team and help each other whenever someone needed an extra hand, and if someone was done with their patient’s care earlier, we would go around asking the rest of our group and the nurses if they needed help with something. During my second rotation, because we worked in pairs, I developed an even greater sense of teamwork. By the end of the rotation, we barely needed to communicate verbally, because we both knew what to do in regards to our patient care.

The nursing teamwork survey is a 33 item questionnaire that finds information from the hospitals’’ staffs concerning the teamwork portrayed among the nurses. Through teamwork, it is expected that there will be an increase in the quality of work and service delivery. The 33-item questionnaire had a Likert type scale that helped in the estimation of the teamwork among nurses by placing them between “always” and “rarely” (Kalisch & Lee, 2011, p. 84). The nursing teamwork survey used literature

What is a team work? Team work can be defined as when actions of individuals are brought together for the purpose of a common goal. Each person in a team puts his efforts to achieve the objectives of large group. Teams make efforts to achieve the success but not necessarily the success is achieved every time. Within a team every member plays a role to achieve the team’s objectives. These roles add new and important dimensions to interactions of team members. Bruce Tuckman’s team development theory provides a way to tackle the tasks of making a team through the completion of the project. On the part of the team every member played an important role to achieve the success at

Courtenay, Nancarrow, and Dawson (2013) reviewed numerous articles that studied the effect of teamwork education (communication, cooperation, etc.) on the time and outcome of care. Courtenay et al. (2013) found that effective teamwork decreased the time necessary for critical treatments or surgery and also reduced the number of errors made. Courtenay et al. (2013) write that teams performed well when the responsibilities and role of each team member was known. Courtenay et al. (2013) also state that good teams shared an overall sense of mutual responsibility of the outcome of the patient.

To understand the term “Interprofessional team working” I have been working within a subset group where everyone has a different health profession background course such as child nursing, social worker, occupational therapist and myself as an adult nursing. On part 1, I will be discussing about themes social policy and culture and diversity. And on part 2, I will reflect my team working using different models and will mention our strength and weakness.

As a Family Nurse Practitioner teamwork will be uniformly important. This will be extremely important as a novice nurse practitioner. I will need to rely on mentors and experienced nurse practitioners for advice. In addition establishing a rapport with my patients and working together with them as a team is very important. This will enable me to take a leadership role as a provider and take suggestions on how to better manage their health.

In order to fully explore the nature of team work in healthcare it is importance to first look at what defines a team.A team can be defined as two or more people with specific roles working together to achieve a common purpose(Kalisch & Begeny, 2005). For

Working in a team is an important responsibility by understanding each other’s role which may include doctor, nurse, occupational therapist, physiotherapist and many more. Team members divide the work based on their scope practice such as acute care, metal health care, homecare etc. Interprofessional collaboration practice is decision making and communicating between individuals for their patient’s health based on their knowledge and skills. It helps to promote habits, maximizing health resources, leading care to be safer with patient’s satisfaction and Canada’s health care (Kenaszchuk, Reeves, Nicholas, & Zwarenstein, 2010).

Teamwork in nursing is a little different that the teamwork of an actual team. In nursing, there is an ‘I’ in team, except here the ‘I’ stands for independent (QSEN Institute, 2015). Nurses and hospital faculty work their independent jobs, but communicate in order to give the patient the best care possible. Once again as stated before by Berman, the QSEN Institute believes that knowing your team 's strengths and weaknesses will also help you to be able to provide the best care possible.

During the team formation, a number of challenges manifested. Firstly, it was the fact that there were nurses from other units. Hence, there were fears that they may not be well informed with procedures undertaken in our unit. However, this challenged was effectively addressed by assigning the nurses from other units a nurse from our unit to help her during the emergency period.

During my own personal experience in nursing, I have had the opportunity to witness teamwork at its best, and shamefully, teamwork at its worst. During a shift on a neuro critical care floor, I was assisting a nurse turn and change a patient. Nearly every time we shifted the patient, an alarm would sound. Within moments there was a voice on the other side of the curtain asking if help was needed. Next time the alarm sounded; there was the helpful voice again. It never failed. How comforting for the nurse this must feel, and ultimately, better outcomes, as well as safety for the patient. At the other end of the spectrum, I have watched as a nurse asks for help, and is turned down multiple times. I have heard the awful phrase, “that’s not my job.” I have seen patients code, and the nurse spends the next hour caring for that patient including resuscitation, and transferring to an intensive care unit. No one takes the initiative to check on the nurses patients while she is gone, not even the charge nurse. Clearly this is not a positive or safe work environment for anyone. Teamwork

After further review of the case study, conflict management among team members needs to be addressed. Resolving conflict can often be like a constant balancing act among the opposing needs and interests; conflict can be unpleasant and stressful (Haraway & Haraway III, 2005). Conflict manage is essential for the success of healthcare organizations. Learning, as an organization, to constructively manage and succeed in conflict situations is a foundational construct of leadership and management (Ledlow, 2009). There are six different conflict styles: (1) accommodating, (2) avoiding, (3) collaborating, (4) competing, (5) compromising and (6) problem solving. After reading the case study, the surgical team is displaying conflict style of avoiding “potential disruption outweighs the benefits of resolution, gathering information supersedes immediate decision making, others can resolve the conflict more effectively and issues seem a result of other issues,” (Ledlow, 2009). Instead of going to the Physician Assistant, Nurse B should feel comfortable speaking to the surgeon with her questions and concerns.