Managing Conflict

Because A&E often has difficult and violent patients, your manager has asked you to give these new nurses some guidance on how to deal with challenging behaviour that they may encounter.

In this assignment the author will suggest strategies to minimise effects of challenging behaviour in health and social care settings P3. The author will then discuss strategies used to minimise the effects of one type of challenging behaviour in health and social care settings M3. Finally evaluate these strategies for dealing with this one type of behaviour D1.

times, dirty clothing or bed linen, misuse of medication, lack of care plans, lack of heating, staff entering into service users’ rooms

At the same time, workplace incivility happens between colleagues and between manager and subordinates, it is happening almost every day in healthcare settings such as in hospital and clinics where workers are directly uncivil to disrespect each other. For instance, when a nurse is deviant or does not follow the supervisor intensely because of differences in opinion or an act of retaliation when the manager is being rude, treating their staff with rough words, discourtesy, and lack respect to his staff, there are also times when the uncivil behavior is not intentional or

How can conflict in the workplace affect the quality of care for the clients? Describe examples and techniques you have seen.

The third form of Conflict management is Accommodation. When the task at hand is more important than the conflict that has arisen and when relationships may be damaged putting the entire project in jeopardy. With this method a team member may minimize the conflict in order to protect the relationship and ultimately the project. Some of the negative aspects in using this

Inability of supervisors to adequately provide for clients without putting them at risk brought on when the number of risk clients are steadily rising

Aggression and violence in the medical setting appear to be on the increase. In support of this impression, a number of studies have documented surprising rates of such behavior toward trainees as well as physicians-in-practice. However, to date, these studies have focused on the experiences and reports of professionals, not patient offenders. In a series of investigations, we examined aggressive and disruptive office behaviors from the perspective of the perpetrators—the patients. Findings from these studies indicate that disruptive office behaviors by patients appear to be related to borderline personality symptomatology, alcohol/drug misuse, prescription medication abuse, and higher rates of past mental healthcare utilization. The results

This is the case of a patient who was physically and verbally abuse to peer patients and staffs even after the administration of multiple pharmacological interventions. Even though it was a locked unit, it is difficult when patient tries to be offensive and aggressive towards peer patients. The patient was not only being a threat to other patients but also to the staffs. Various distraction techniques were attempted but the patient’s behavior continued to escalate. The same patient was put in seclusion room multiple times the same week.

Working in the medical field you deal with different social behaviors from patients to coworkers. In these dealings you learn different ways to handle situations that help to develop your own personal style of dealing with medical situations and to better your leadership. Four types of social behaviors that I have come across in my time in the healthcare field are angry, dismissive, emotional, and prosocial behaviors. The first time I had an interaction with someone displaying an angry behavior was when i was working as a customer service representative in my clinic. A patient was at the front desk yelling at the front desk personnel because they had notified him that the doctor was running behind by about 15 minutes. His frustration stemmed from the appointment timed he had made not being honored and being required to wait an extra 15 minutes to see the doctor. This particular patient had the look of person that could be considered intimidating and one that looks like they have the possibility of doing physical harm to someone because he was that mad. When I approached the patient I kindly escorted him to a room where i could tell him the reason why it was taking so long to see him. After talking to him it became clear that he had other things weighing on his mind and the news that he had to wait just sent him over the edge. After talking to him calmly it seemed to diffuse his anger and later he apologized to the front desk for blowing up at them and that all he

Incivility in the workplace, although sometimes totally unintended does have impact on the relationship between patient and provider and may cause harm psychologically (Penny & Spector, 2005). Stress and difficult situation generating this stress, such as a disaster, is a major factor in such disruptive behaviors (Fellblinger, 2009). Consequently, it can very often be expected to be issue both from the public and the providers, either through reaction to a negative input by a client/patient or as intrinsic negative behavior.

If a patient feels negative or if they are in a bad mood it can lead them to be hostile towards others. Hostility can include being aggressive, rude and angry. Clients may be hostile for a number of reasons, for example their illness. They may feel powerless due to their condition and therefore act rudely and aggressively towards the health professionals. This creates a barrier to effective caring because if the client is being aggressive towards a member of staff, they may feel like they are unable to treat them well, as they won’t accept it. Hostility in the patient can also occur due to stereotyping, discrimination/prejudice and sometimes pregnancy hormones. Also, a client in an antenatal ward could feel hostile if they have just been admitted to the ward; this is because it is a new environment and they feel uncomfortable in the new situation. They may feel like they are isolated and alone, and take it out on the staff, behaving hostile towards them. Hostility can create barriers, like if the client will not allow any member of staff to come close to her, which stops the professional giving her the best level of care. Clients could also refuse treatment, worsening their illness, which creates a barrier to effective care. Staff may use the caring skill of disengagement to leave the client to calm down; if the client is posing a threat to the staff they must remove themselves from the situation for their own safety, and they should ask for help from another member of

In trying to resolve the conflict between Reece and Patel, Edwards used an avoidance strategy. Instead of speaking directly about the root causes, or sources, of the conflict, Edwards focused on the behaviors and treated Reece and Patel like children. Edwards scolded them, and sent them off without bothering to find out what was bothering the two. Of course, this type of conflict resolution is ineffective because it fails to address the underlying issues. As Anderson (n.d.) points out, addressing the problem is key to conflict resolution. "When a conflict does happen, a manager needs to focus the conflicting parties on the issue and have them leave out any personal problems they may be having," (Anderson, n.d.).

For many of us, every day is a struggle to avoid conflict. Yet avoidance is practically impossible since the core characteristics, ideas and beliefs of each individual often conflict with our own. Differences of opinion, competitive zeal, and misinterpretations, among other factors, can all generate ill feelings between co-workers within an organization. While we can’t avoid conflict, we can learn how to sidestep negative confrontations by becoming familiar with the types of conflicts that most commonly arise in the work place and by learning how to resolve them.

A study by Albert Mehrabian 1967 showed that 93% of communication is nonverbal with 55% of body language, and 38% of tonality, this takes into consideration that verbal communication only accounts for 7% of impact of all communication (Mehrabian, 2007).