Various types of conflicts involving multiple healthcare stakeholders can occur in a healthcare setting. The parties involved use different methods to resolve conflict, depending on the situation, the outcomes, and personal values. Most people use specific preferred conflict resolution strategies. Sometimes the preference can be more than one strategy. Thomas-Kilmann, in his conflict resolution Model, identifies five approaches that can be applied to resolve conflict. Avoiding strategy entails ignoring the conflict and hoping it will resolve itself with time. Accommodating strategy entails focusing on satisfying the other party’s concerns at the expense of your own desires (Fahy, Mueller & Fecteau, 2021).
Compromising involves finding an acceptable resolution that will partly but not entirely satisfy the concerns of all parties involved. Competing entails striving to satisfy one’s desires at the expense of the other parties involved. Finally, collaborating consists of finding a solution that entirely satisfies the concerns of all involved parties. In his model, the Thomas-Kilmann model asserts that the balance between assertiveness and cooperativeness influences the strategy chosen by an individual (Fahy, Mueller & Fecteau, 2021). Assertiveness involves taking action to satisfy personal needs, while cooperativeness involves taking action to satisfy the other’s needs. Therefore, each of the five strategies involves different degrees of assertiveness and cooperativeness. For example, accommodating involves a high degree of cooperativeness and a low degree of assertiveness, as opposed to competing (Elmasry & Wang, 2021).
Of these five stages, the skill that I am most likely to use is accommodation. I am a selfless person, thus more concerned about other people’s needs than mine. I have employed this skill previously in my work environment and achieved fantastic outcomes. The case involved an issue-based conflict in a medical-surgical unit. It involved caring for a post-surgical wound. Based on my experience from previous travel nurse assignments, I found myself disagreeing with how a staff nurse was changing a patient’s bandages in my new facility. The nurse claimed that she was following the standard protocol in the specific facility. Instead of coercing the staff nurse into adapting my preferred method of changing wound bandages, I consulted with other nurses on the unit. I realized that my preferred way of changing bandages is different from facility protocol. Using the accommodating conflict resolution strategy, I adopted the facility’s protocol for changing patient bandages while on that assignment.
Among the five conflict resolution strategies proposed by Thomas-Kilmann, the strategy I tend to use the least is collaboration. Reflecting on my past practice, one instance that I think I should have used a collaboration strategy entailed a chronically ill patient who refused to adhere to the prescribed treatment. She preferred taking cultural herbal medicine. I insisted the patient take the biomedicine because they were evidence-based. Although the target treatment outcome was obtained, the patient reported low satisfaction with the care provided. In addition, the patient reported the incidence to the hospital management. Reflecting on the adverse outcomes that resulted from competing conflict resolution strategies, I think a collaboration strategy would have yielded better outcomes.
In that case, applying a collaboration strategy would have entailed the collaboration of both patient and care provider in designing the care plan. This would have resulted in incorporating traditional and biotherapy into the treatment plan. My role as a care provider in the process would have been to guide the patient on how to integrate cultural medicine into the treatment plan safely. Although the therapeutic outcomes would be similar to the initially applied strategy, the second approach would have yielded a better patient experience and more satisfaction. It would have also promoted culturally competent care.
References
Elmasry, K., & Wang, Y. (2021, October). How to Improve Conflict Management in Hospitals in the Healthcare Industry. In International Workshop of Advanced Manufacturing and Automation (pp. 495-499). Springer, Singapore. DOI: 10.1007/978-981-19-0572-8_63
Fahy, A. S., Mueller, C., & Fecteau, A. (2021, October). Conflict resolution and negotiation in pediatric surgery. In Seminars in Pediatric Surgery (Vol. 30, No. 5, p. 151100). WB Saunders. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sempedsurg.2021.151100
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