Organizations are made up of smaller departments and units. Each of these departments, up of teams of individuals that must work together to achieve the departmental mission that is aligned to the organizational mission. Consequently, teams collaborate to achieve the corporate goal. Organizations face challenges such as conflict. Health facilities are no exceptions to disputes. When conflicts occur in organizations, they can be constructive or destructive. In health care settings, conflicts are triggered by factors such as communication problems, role disputes, organizational structure, and misunderstandings, among others. The focus of the paper is collaboration, conflict and conflict management in care settings.
Observations of Conflict in Practice Setting
In my practice setting, I have experienced conflict in personal and organizational conflicts. Nurses are always busy in care settings and in most cases, responsibilities pile up. Recently, I experienced an ugly situation that caused a massive battle between two nursing teams that were looking after parents in the gynecological ward. Three nurses working in the morning shift were in charge of patients in the gynecological department, and their responsibility was to take a record of patients' progress, administering medication and ensuring that all patients’ requirements were well catered. About six new patients were admitted to the gynecological ward that morning and work was pilling up. The nurses were already feeling exhausted by the time it was about an hour to the end of their shift.
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The three nurses received an emergency case at the end of the shift, and all were forced to respond. The nurses had not completed the regular patient checkups, and not all patients had taken their medication. Proper records had not been taken at the end of the morning shift, and the three nurses were feeling the pressure. The afternoon shift team realized that correct records had not been made and also patients were complaining that they had not taken medication. The new squad already anticipated a rough shift as they had to repeat some of the things that were not well done by the previous team. The handover was not smooth, and the two sides had to work together to get the work done. Both organisations recognized that the work was too much for three nurses. The three nurses handing over were angered by the pile of work and also complained of being understaffed. The team taking over was already expressing anger as they felt like they were doing work that should have been done by the team before. There was an exchange of bitter words at the end of hand over because the second team already felt exploited.
The problem was unresolved as the second team was forced to overwork to complete all activities that were left unfinished by the first team. The team was also made of three nurses and had to do extra work to complete all tasks. By the end of the second team’s shift, the three nurses were exhausted and angry and were filling a complaint about work overload. Patients complained of not taking medication at the right time. The nurse leaders were forced to recommend collaboration to resolve the conflict.
Conflict Development
Conflict is not an event; instead, it is a process. Various types of conflict exist including individual conflict, interpersonal and organizational conflict. However, the process of conflict development remains the same despite the disparity in the different types. The event of the conflict in an organization has a beginning and ends when the conflict manifests in people. The conflict development process can be described using four stages, including latent, perceived, felt and manifest conflict.
Finkelman (2016), states that the first stage of conflict development is the latent stage. People anticipate that conflict might occur in the future. Potential conflict can occur as a result of different factors such as inadequate communication, competition for resources, lack of trust and ignored concerns. A latent form of conflict can be verbalized by the staff in an organization. For example, “If we do not consult our group leaders, it is going to cause a big problem", or it can be felt. From the situation discussed above, the team taking over already anticipated that their shift would be tedious because the previous group had not handled their responsibilities appropriately.
According to Finkelman (2016), perceived conflict is the stage where people feel that something is wrong, and it is going to cause conflict. At this stage, it is necessary to recognize or be aware that conflict exists at a particular time. Perceived conflict is essential as it affects whether or not a conflict exists, and what is known about the conflict and how it can be resolved. For example, the team taking the afternoon shift recognized that there was a conflict because the team working in the morning had not finished making patient progress records, and not all patients had taken medication.
Felt stage of conflict occurs when persons begin to express feelings such as anger or anxiety ( Finkelman, 2016) . Felt conflict triggers emotions and causes stress to people. At this stage, if the dispute is not noticed, it will manifest in different ways. The team working in the morning was already exhausted and angry. The nurses in the afternoon shift were annoyed by the feeling that they had to deal with the mess created by the team working in the morning.
Finkelman (2016), notes that the manifest stage occurs when conflict is evident. Manifest conflict is either destructive or constructive. From the situation above, the patients were angry at the nurses for not taking due care. The team working in the afternoon felt that it was essential to raise the complaint of work spillover.
Conflict Resolution Strategy
The conflict that occurred was both constructive and destructive. The dispute led anger causing negative energy at the place of work. Both teams went home late, tired and angry. The productivity of both teams was negatively affected because the patients complained of delayed services. The problem was also constructive in that it exposed a weakness that needed the attention of nursing leadership. In such a situation, it was the responsibility of the entire nursing team to work out the problems.
The problem experienced would not be avoided because there was a possibility for the issue to reoccur in the future. The nursing team would not also resolve the conflict among the organisations working in the gynecological ward by allowing the teams to compete. Therefore, the team would resolve the dispute through accommodation and collaboration ( Finkelman, 2016) .
For the hospital to address the conflict, there was a need to develop a strategy. The strategy would involve the entire nursing leadership and the management as well as nurses to come together and discuss the way forward. The approach is to identify the cause of conflict among the nurses and to put measures in place to prevent such a problem from reoccurring in the future.
The problem at hand is that the gynecological ward was facing a shortage of human resources that was causing the teams working there to experience work overload. The complaint filed by the team working in the second shift indicated that the nurses had to work the entire shift with minimal rests. As it was evident, excess work affected the total output of the nurses. The nurses were forced to work faster to complete their daily duties which changed how the patients were attended and also increase the risk of committing errors. Among the recommendation that the nurses had put in place were to have at least one or two nurses added in each team per shift and an extra nurse to be provided in cases of emergencies.
The recommended strategy is to have teams working in the gynecological ward work as a unit by accommodating each other ( Almost et al., 2016; Finkelman, 2016) . For example, having teams brief each other about the situation in the ward to understand the circumstances and learn how to help each other out. That way, the team finishing up the shift will brief the team taking over about the work situation and work as a team to identify problems and solutions. The accommodating strategy is for teams to work together as a unit than working as different units. The nurses would create better groups in cooperating to work together in the short term as sometimes it is impossible to have enough resources.
The strategy also recommends that the entire team is working in the gynecological ward to work in collaboration with nursing as the whole members and leadership ( Finkelman, 2016) . Human resource shortage is not a problem of the small units operating in the hospital; instead, it is a problem of the entire organization. The teams working in the gynecological ward know that there is a nursing shortage that was causing conflict in the unit. Thus, the important thing is to collaborate with the nursing leadership to see into the nursing shortage. The nursing team working in the gynecological ward should show how the deficiency causes conflict, and the nursing leadership has the responsibility to provide the needed nurses. Adopting the strategy will help reduce work overload, thus minimizing conflicts in the team.
Conclusion
Organizational conflicts are not new in care settings. The sensitivity of care setting requires sufficient resources, trust, proper and adequate communication, role definitions, and professional commitment. The availability of these factors reduces conflict in care settings. However, these factors are missing conflicts that are common like in most workplaces. Conflict management is the responsibility of the entire organization. Addressing conflicts requires the leadership to understand the source of conflict and the various stages of the conflict. Conflict occurs in four stages, including the latent phase, perceived, felt conflict and manifest stage ( Finkelman, 2016) . Each stage is essential since it can help identify a potential conflict and resolve it before it manifests.
There are different ways of dealing with conflicts when it occurs in an organization. The most important factors are to engage the conflicting parties in resolving the matter. A conflict can be avoided meaning that it can be one party or both can withdraw from a situation. Opposing parties can resolve to accommodate each other and cooperate to eliminate the problem. Conflict can also be determined by competing, which involves allowing the conflicting parties to show their power. Opposing teams can also collaborate to deal with the problem and prevent a similar challenge from arising in the future to cause problems ( Finkelman, & Kenner, 2016) .
Dealing with conflict caused by the human resource shortage in a health setting in the future requires collaboration. Proper partnership in the nursing teams can negate a human resources challenge because there are coordination and adequate communication. It is easy to allocate more nurses where there are needed more. For example, in cases of emergency, more nurses can be sent in the emergency unit to help. Coordination of the entire team, even with a shortage, can help avoid conflict in the future.
References
Almost, J., Wolff, A. C., Stewart ‐ Pyne, A., McCormick, L. G., Strachan, D., & D's55douza, C. (2016). Managing and mitigating conflict in healthcare teams: an integrative review. Journal of advanced nursing , 72 (7), 1490-1505.
Finkelman, A. (2016). Leadership and management for nurses: Core competencies for quality care . Pearson.
Finkelman, A., & Kenner, C. (2016). Professional nursing concepts: competencies for quality leadership (3rd Eds.). Burlington, MD: Jones & Bartlett .
