Ending up with a win-win situation is the ultimate goal in most typical conflicts in a healthcare setting. In the precise case where the conflict is between the client and the family, the nurse has limited courses of action, so they must remain as objective and calculating as possible. Marquis & Huston (2015) suggests compromising, competing, accommodating, smoothing, and collaborating as the best candidates for such a kind of conflict resolution. While the choice technique almost entirely depends on each situation, compromising and accommodating prove to be the most ideal, particularly for issue-based conflicts that arise with interpersonal conflict. Compromising requires the patient and the family to give up something of equal value. The nurse will then guide the way to an optimum solution.
Some cases involve value-based conflicts, such as the client’s family disagreeing with the patient over a moral issue, say they do not wish their kin to undergo specific surgical procedures or drugs they deem unethical. These cases call for smoothing, where the nurse focuses the conversation on where the client and family agree rather than where they disagree. While smoothing does not eliminate the differences in ethical grounds, it is attested to help the parties momentarily agree on the way forward to save the situation (Zaider et al., 2016). However, open communication and persuasiveness are pillars to the success of smoothing as a conflict resolution method.
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The nurse could also resolve to use a helpful strategy to manage conflicts. In this case, the nurse or nurse manager shelves their priorities or convinces the client to de-prioritize theirs. Obliging aims at "keeping the peace," and is useful in handling trivial conflicts. A case in which obliging works fine is, for instance, when the client's family requests for a change of the patient's attending nurse or ward, as long as their rationale is justified. The nurse can promote client consent by invoking regulations and policies protecting their opinion as enshrined in the health facility's code of ethics.
References
Marquis, B. L., & Huston, C. J. (2015). Leadership Roles and Management Functions in Nursing: Theory and Application . Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Zaider, T. I., Banerjee, S. C., Manna, R., Coyle, N., Pehrson, C., Hammonds, S Bylund, C. L. (2016). Responding to Challenging Interactions with Families: A Training Module for Inpatient Oncology Nurses. Families, Systems, & Health , 34(3), 204.
