Norton Healthcare in Louisville, Kentucky is a collection of healthcare centers with hundreds of outlets and thousands of employees. Internally, the hospital chains bring together a collection of different professionals who need to work in harmony and cohesion (Marcus, Dorn & McNulty, 2011). Externally, hospitals work for and with patients, more often than not at difficult times in the patients’ lives. Both the internal and internal prerequisites outlined above create a high propensity for conflict within the organization or between the organization and its external stakeholders. The organization handles a wide variety of patients and also includes a wide array of different professionals and experts hence having a high proclivity for conflict (Norton Healthcare., 2018). Conflicts can be expensive in terms of time and money and also be debilitating for any organization. Conflict resolution involves avoiding conflicts or seeking to ensure that they are mitigated in size and scope. It also means getting ahead of conflicts as and when they happen, minimizing the damage that they cause, and eliminating them and vagaries they cause.
Summary Description of the Organization and Mission
Norton Healthcare is a not-for-profit organization that runs about 270 centers, all relating to the healthcare industry, including several large hospitals. The organization has over 14,000 employees, 2000 of whom are physicians. The services provided by the organization include clinical attention and care for children and adults alike for a variety of conditions including serious ones. By its very nature, therefore, the staff members in the organization vary exponentially and include consultants, doctors, all types of registered nurses including APNs, administrators, accountants and many others (Norton Healthcare., 2018). Further, Norton Healthcare is closely affiliated to mainstream faith, mainly the Catholic and Protestant. Among the notable divisions in Norton Healthcare is a set of five Louisville hospitals that inter alia have a total of almost two thousand beds thus making for a massive hospital chain. The organization’s mission engenders the proviso of quality healthcare to patients in response to community needs. However, faith heritage based on Christian belief also forms a part of the hospital’s mission. As indicated above, the faith heritage involves close affiliation to several mainstream Christian churches including the Roman Catholic Church, the Episcopal Church, and the United Church of Christ (Norton Healthcare., 2018). A close reading of the mission statement thus reveals that the hospital seeks to provide the best medical services from a patient level and also on a community level. However, when issues of health and faith collide, the hospital seems bound to take the perspective that best favors mainstream Christian faith.
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Conflicts within the Organization and Their Causes
Employer/management Employee Conflict
With a collection of over ten thousand employees, there is a high proclivity of employer- to-employee conflicts including conflicts between employees and the various levels of management. The conflicts can be based on a variety of issues including pay, benefits, and working hours (Marcus, Dorn & McNulty, 2011). Healthcare falls within the critical care industry where some services are necessary on a 24- hourly basis. Conflicts can thus arise based on issues such as work-family balance, work-life balance, and the payment of overtimes for professional staff. Further, in an organization with so many employees, conflicts can arise when some employees are terminated or when they feel that they have been bypassed in promotion due to gender, race, or ethnic discrimination. Several levels of professionals in the healthcare sector are unionizable hence falling under the protection of collective bargaining agreements, a fact that complicates hiring, firing, and remuneration issues. Issues relating to gender and race can also be a source of conflicts under this category. Some people may feel that they are being treated unfairly due to their gender affiliations, LGBT inclinations, or their race (Marcus, Dorn & McNulty, 2011). Finally, industrial relations can also be a cause of conflict at the organization more so with regard to the unionizable members of staff. A strike by essential members of staff such as nurses can debilitate the entire organization.
Inter-employee Conflicts
Hospitals and healthcare centers bring together a collection of variously trained experts who are affiliated with the different professionals within the industry. For example, clinicians such as physicians and surgeons mostly tend towards solving the problems that patients have from a clinical perspective through inter alia pharmacological interventions (McKinlay et al., 2017). Nurses, on the other hand, are more inclined towards holistic care that in some cases may not be aligned with curative procedures. It is common for nurses and clinicians to collide about what needs to be done with a patient. Within these groups are also subgroups where collisions may also arise. For example, a surgeon may disagree with a physician on the best way to treat a similar patient. Conversely, a general care nurse may disagree with a specialist nurse such as a midwife on how to manage a patient (McKinlay et al., 2017). The conflicts can be exacerbated when teams incorporating several professional affiliations have to work together on the same patient, such as when the patient with cancer, also has accident wounds and a mental health problem. Conflicts in this segment can thus be between individual employees, within teams assembled to undertake specialized duties, such as a surgical procedure, and also between such teams (McKinlay et al. 2017). Finally, disputes can also be between different professional groups due to the different affiliations present.
Employee to Patient Professional Conflict
Conflicts between patients and professionals caused by a variety of active and passive reasons, is a major concern in modern healthcare. Traditionally, healthcare to the patient conflict was almost unheard off since patients trusted and respected healthcare professionals at a very advanced level. However, in the current age of increased proliferation of information and freedom of choice, most patients are as opinionated as the practitioner’s hence increasing proclivity for conflict (Marcus, Dorn & McNulty, 2011). On the other hand, professional errors, negligence, or even malice happen from time to time leading to conflicts between the organization and patients. A hospital with 2000 physicians and thousands of other professionals runs a risk of even a class action suit that can cause the hospital to collapse.
Conflicts based on Religious Issues
With Norton Healthcare being closely affiliated to mainstream churches, it runs a twofold chance for conflict. On the one part, as a not-for-profit organization, the hospital relies on donors, some of whom are affiliated to churches while others are not (Norton Healthcare., 2018). Seeking to please them all can create conflict. Some churches do not also agree on some subjects such as gender issues and abortion which may also lead to conflicts for the hospital. For example, the Catholic Church has an almost zero tolerance policy on abortion while the same may not be said about several other mainstream churches such as the liberal Episcopal Church. LGBT issues are pertinent to healthcare, more so when it comes to reproductive health and different religious affiliations are in conflict about the same. Religious issues can also be a source of conflict between patients and the hospital, more so a doctor or nurse holds a religious belief that differs from that of the organization’s administration.
Steps to Manage or Resolve the Conflicts
It is important for Norton Healthcare to take steps to ensure that if conflicts happen, they do not debilitate the organization. Application of effective and comprehensive conflict resolution mechanisms not only mitigate damage caused by conflict but can also make incidences of conflict to become opportunities for organizational betterment. As reflected in Marcus, Dorn and McNulty (2011), conflict management and resolution operate best as and when it is handled in a structured manner. Among the steps to resolve conflict include the ones hereinbelow .
Conflict Avoidance
Among the cardinal steps in handling conflicts in a scenario where the occurrence of conflicts is common is to avoid conflict before they happen. Most conflicts escalate because of a conjunction between different conflicts or because they have happened repeatedly. Conflict avoidance may not prevent conflicts from happening but it can reduce occurrences and also avoid conjunctions of several conflicts happening contemporaneously (Marcus, Dorn & McNulty, 2011).
Admitting a Conflict at the Earliest and Commencing Mitigation
Failure to recognize a conflict at its nascence, admit it, and commence extenuation measures only leads to its exacerbation. Norton Healthcare staff should be able to catch conflicts at their earliest and seek to mitigate damage caused. Commencing mitigation includes understanding what the conflict is about, the parties involved, the grounds of the dispute and their extent and also what can be done to bring the dispute to a logical conclusion (Marcus, Dorn & McNulty, 2011).
Setting the Stage for Negotiation
With litigations and fallouts being the worst outcome for a dispute from the perspective of Norton Healthcare, setting the stage for negotiations is the best next step after understanding any dispute. All parties to a dispute, whether internal or external do not really want the dispute but they need something. Understanding what they need and creating the impression that it can be available is among the ways of setting the stage for negotiations (Marcus, Dorn & McNulty, 2011). The impression made, however, should not entail an assurance since negotiations also involve compromises.
Negotiation
The next step is negotiation , which can be defined as having a discussion with the parties to a dispute with a view to arriving at a conclusion. In the instant context, the negotiation can be between the two or more internal factions in dispute within the organization, or the company negotiating with an external party. All negotiations are based on building bridges and a careful balancing act between different compromises (Marcus, Dorn & McNulty, 2011). The rule of the thumb is to always seek to arrive at a compromise but not at any cost. The balancing act thus relates to just how much compromise can be arrived at by both parties.
Mediation, Arbitration and Conflict Resolution
Not all negotiations will succeed hence the need to take the option of seeking third-party assistance in the case negotiations fail. Mediation entails having a third party seeking to help the two or more parties in a conflict arrive at a consensus (Marcus, Dorn & McNulty, 2011). Arbitration entails having a third party who will hear both sides then arrive at a decision that is binding to both parties. As opposed to judicial processes, the parties need to agree on the arbitrator first. Finally, conflict resolution entails any secondary measures that may be undertaken to resolve a dispute that cannot be solved through primary negotiations between the parties. Meta-leadership, for example, can be an effective conflict resolution mechanism.
Conclusion
It is clear from the entirety of the above that by its nature, scope, size, and industry of operation, Norton Healthcare is inordinately prone to conflict of various natures. The organization can have conflicts with its labor force and their representatives, between employees, with patients, and conflicts with external stakeholders such as donors. Investing in proper conflict resolutions is necessary, even critical for the organization but it is also perilous to wait until conflicts happen so as to try and solve them. Using the approach of meta-leadership towards conflict resolution is thus the best option for Norton Healthcare. Meta-leadership will involve inter alia putting measures in place to alleviate conflict causing issues. Secondly, it will involve being able to perceive, understand and resolve issues, before they turn into conflicts. The other steps of setting the stage for negotiations and actual negotiations will also be enhanced by meta-leadership. Solving conflicts before they involve third parties such as mediator and arbitrators would be ideal.
References
Marcus, L. J., Dorn, B. C., & McNulty, E. J. (2011). Renegotiating health care: Resolving conflict to build collaboration . Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.
McKinlay, E. M., Morgan, S. J., Gray, B. V., Macdonald, L. M., & Pullon, S. R. (2017). Exploring interprofessional, interagency multimorbidity care: case study based observational research. Journal of Comorbidity , 7 (1), 64-78
Norton Healthcare. (2018). Norton Healthcare in Louisville, Kentucky: About Us. Retrieved from https://nortonhealthcare.com/about-us/
