ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Year : 2021 | Volume
: 2 | Issue : 2 | Page : 59--61
Conflict management styles of nurses at all india institute of medical sciences, New Delhi, India
Tarika Sharma1, Manisha Bhatia1, Gaddam Rachel Andrews2, R Mahesh3,
1 College of Nursing, Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences, AIIMS, New Delhi, India
2 College of Nursing, AIIMS, New Delhi, India
3 Department of Hospital Administration, AIIMS, New Delhi, India
Correspondence Address:
Ms. Manisha Bhatia
College of Nursing, Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences, New Delhi
India
Abstract
Background: Conflict is an inevitable and integral part of any work environment including nursing. Unresolved conflicts among nurses may lead to increased errors in patient care, affect their morale, and even increase turnover. Objective: The objective of the study is to determine the conflict-handling styles practiced by newly joined nursing staff working in a tertiary care hospital. Materials and Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted on newly joined 297 nurses. Standardized Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument was used to collect the data. Nurses were asked to give answers that characterized their dominant response in a conflict situation. Results: A total of 34.7% nurses used accommodating style for conflict management whereas 30.3% used collaborating style. It was followed by compromising, competing, and avoiding styles of conflict management. Conclusion: There is a need to enhance nurses' conflict management skills which in long run may lead to improvement in the quality of work as well as job satisfaction among nurses.
How to cite this article:
Sharma T, Bhatia M, Andrews GR, Mahesh R. Conflict management styles of nurses at all india institute of medical sciences, New Delhi, India.J Appl Sci Clin Pract 2021;2:59-61
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How to cite this URL:
Sharma T, Bhatia M, Andrews GR, Mahesh R. Conflict management styles of nurses at all india institute of medical sciences, New Delhi, India. J Appl Sci Clin Pract [serial online] 2021 [cited 2023 May 28 ];2:59-61
Available from: http://www.jascp.org/text.asp?2021/2/2/59/324117 |
Full Text
Introduction
Nursing profession, which is based on collaborative relationships with both colleagues and patients, requires individuals with different upbringing and cultural backgrounds to work closely with others. Individuals can hold diverse values, potentially affecting these relationships, which may result in conflict. The issue in conflict is not its existence, rather its management. When it is managed poorly, the outcome will be uncomplimentary with counterproductive results, and if managed properly, it encourages competition, recognizes legitimate differences, and becomes powerful source of motivation.[1] Conflict resolution is an essential element of a healthy nursing work environment as unresolved conflicts among nurses may lead to increased errors in patient care.[2],[3] Handling conflicts in an efficient and effective manner result in improved quality, patient safety, and staff morale and limit work stress for the health-care professional.[4],[5],[6]
Conflict management results not only in successful conflict resolution but also contributes to higher effectiveness, trust, and openness among the personnel as well as organizations.[7] Examining conflict management styles among nurses will provide information to the nurse educators to equip nurses for effective conflict management. Adopting situational sensitivity and behavioral flexibility in practicing the conflict management styles, nurses can efficiently deal with conflicts in their professional as well as personal life too. Therefore, the present study aimed to determine the conflict-handling styles practiced by newly joined nursing staff working in tertiary care hospital to manage conflicts.
Materials and Methods
Design and setting
This descriptive cross-sectional survey was conducted in All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. Ethical clearance for the study was obtained from Institute Ethics Committee, AIIMS, consent was obtained, and each participant was provided with participant information sheet. All newly joined nursing staff willing to participate in the study and posted in hospital except for trauma and dental center were included in the study. Questionnaire was administered to total 306 nurses out of which 297 nurses filled the questionnaire completely.
Each nurse was approached on individual basis and was informed about the study. After obtaining the informed consent from the participants, they were provided with questionnaire which took almost 10 min to be filled. This questionnaire consists of two parts, part I: subject datasheet and part II: questionnaire for assessing the conflict management style of nurses.
Measures
Part I: Subject data sheet
The subject data sheet was used to collect the demographic details of participants, i.e., age, sex, marital status, type of family, religion, professional qualification, area of work, and total professional experience.
Part II: Questionnaire for assessing the conflict management style of nurses
A Standardized Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument was used to collect data pertaining to conflict management style of nurses. Slight modification (in the form of language) of the tool was done after obtaining the permission for the same. Further content validity of the modified tool was established by 9 experts from nursing as well as hospital administration department. The final modified tool has total 25 items to collect the information regarding conflict resolution skills by nurses. These items consist of various questions pertaining to different styles for conflict management such as avoiding, accommodating, collaborating, compromising, and competing. Nurses were asked to give answers that characterized their dominant response in a conflict situation.
Results
Of 306 nurses, 297 nurses completely filled the questionnaire. The obtained data were coded and entered in excel sheet. Result analysis was done by SPSS version 22. IBM Corp. Released 2013. IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 22 Armonk, Chicago, Illinois: IBM Corp, USA). Descriptive as well as inferential statistics were used for assessing the conflict management style of nurses. Demographic characteristics of nurses showed that majority of the nurses (97.4%) were between 20 and 30 years of age group, 71.7% were female nurses, 72.4% were unmarried, 80.4% were from nuclear families, 52.5% were Hindu, and 61.6% were qualified up to BSc Nursing level. Around 40% nurses had 1–3 years of professional experience whereas 37.3% nurses had more than 3 years of professional experience. These findings are further elaborated in [Table 1].{Table 1}
Results show that 34.7% of nurses used accommodating style for conflict management whereas 30.3% of nurses used collaborating conflict management style. Compromising style of conflict management was used by 18.9% of nurses, competing style by 10.7%, and avoiding style by 5.4% of nurses [Figure 1].{Figure 1}
Discussion
The prevalent style for conflict management was accomodating followed by collaborating in our study. Results were contradictory to the findings of the study done by Al-Hamdan et al.[8] on conflict management styles used by nurses in Jordan. According to their findings, the prevalent style for nursing students was collaborating, followed by compromising, accommodating, competing, and avoiding as they believed that collaborating style is the effective ways of handling conflict to achieve long-term benefit.
A study on integrative review on conflict management styles among nursing professionals by Labrague and McEnroe-Petitte[9] also showed that collaborating was the most frequent style adopted by the nursing professional when dealing and managing conflict followed by accommodation and also concluded that nursing professionals used constructive conflict management approaches rather than destructive approaches.
Another study by Hendel et al.[10] shows that the compromising mode was found to be the significantly most commonly chosen mode (P = 0.00) by head nurses and physicians. Collaborating was chosen significantly more frequently among head nurses (P = 0.001) and least frequently among physicians (P = 0.00).
A study on conflict management style among nursing students by Pines et al.[11] concluded that students scored above the 60th percentile for avoiding and accommodating behaviors and were less likely to use competing or collaborating strategies to manage conflict.
A study by Losa Iglesias and Bengoa Vallejo[12] on conflict resolution styles in the nursing profession demonstrated that the most common style used by nurses overall to resolve workplace conflict was compromising, followed by competing, avoiding, accommodating, and collaborating.
Interestingly, another study by Abd El-Rahman on conflict management styles among nursing students showed that highest percentage of nursing students used collaborating styles of conflict management with their clinical instructors as it might be due to the good IPR, communication, and interaction of the nursing students with the clinical instructors, and they try to investigate the problem and try to find the acceptable solution for both of them.[13]
A study by Ahanchian et al. on conflict management styles among Iranian critical care nursing staff also showed that collaborating style was the most prevalent conflict management style used by them.[14] Similarly, a study by Mosadeghrad and Mojbafan showed that collaborating style was the most dominant style of conflict management.[15] Thus, collaborating with the other party helps in solving the problem, developing good rapport and will foster mutual growth.
Assessing the conflict management style of newly joined nurses is of utmost importance as this can serve as the base of developing desirable conflict management style (collaborating style) among them which will lead to healthy interprofessional as well as intraprofessional relationships ultimately boosting morale and increasing job satisfaction among these professionals.
There are few limitations of the study too. As it was a single-centric study done in a tertiary care setting, the results may not be generalized. Not all the newly joined nurses could be covered in the study. Generalizing the same findings to fresher and experienced nurses will be difficult as these nurses may be new to the institute but not all were new to the profession (there were experienced nurses also in the sample). The state of joining in a premier institute may also alter the basic trait of conflict management (a period of ecstasy), and hence, longitudinal study on the same group may be done to find the differences between these periods.
Conclusion
There is a need to enhance nurses' conflict management skills by experts such as nurse educators, hospital administrators, or personality developers to empower the nurses to face and manage the conflicts in a better way. This in long run may lead to improvement in the quality of work as well as job satisfaction among nurses.
Financial support and sponsorship
Nil
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest
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