Conflict in Health Care

Conflict in Health Care

By Bachchu Kailash Kaini

We face disagreement, disapproval or confrontation almost every day. Some people may like you, whereas some others may not like you. Some can directly confront with you. But, some cannot be as assertive as others to confront with you. Everyone is different in mental, physical, social, economic or political aspect of life. Therefore, likes and dislikes happen.

Conflict appears to be ubiquitous in human relationships; yet, few people would argue that conflict in the workplace is desirable (Baldwin et al 2008). Various research have showed that poor communication and relationships among and between health care professionals can be harmful to service users and result in increased rates of clinical incidents and errors (Espin & Lingard 2001, Lingard  et al. 2002). There are mainly two types of conflicts - relationship and task (Liao & Tsai, 2001). Many researchers (Jehn, 1997 and Amason, 1996) have found that, while relationship conflicts based on personality clashes and interpersonal dislikes are detrimental to group functioning, task conflicts based on disagreements regarding the specific task content are beneficial in many situations.

We live in a diverse society where we prefer harmony instead of clash; integrity instead of deception; and equality instead of inequality. However, every health care team member experiences conflict at one or another point of time at work because of various reasons. It is important to recognise the source or reason of conflict and to solve the problems in the interest of mutual interest of all affected stakeholders. Kenneth and Kilmann (1974) developed conflict mode instrument and noted that different conflict resolution styles were instrumental in different situations based in their degrees of co-operativeness and assertiveness. Kenneth and Kilmann described five styles of conflict resolution and they are competitive, collaborative, compromising, avoiding and accommodating. Use of these approaches can resolve conflict not only in health care settings, but also in any other situations.