Handling Conflict in the Nursing Profession
Case Study:
You are the charge nurse on a 12-hour evening and night shift on a hospital-based LTC facility for the past 6 months. You like your job and the required tasks. You are confident that you are growing in your nursing care and management skills. You had to work with some challenging problems and believe that the staff have grown to trust you and your managerial judgment.
The unit is assigned a new middle manager who seems uncomfortable in his role. The person is an RN but has no previous experience in managing. The new manager, Jim, wants to spend time on both shifts to learn about the nursing care process, meet personnel, and evaluate the management styles being used. Last week, Jim worked 4 hours of one of your shifts with you. It seemed the he wanted to be the charge nurse for those 4 hours and you became confused about what to do to get the work done effectively. Jim told you what to do and reorganized things so that the usual pattern of the unit was disrupted. He made it clear that he was the boss and reprimanded a CNA for taking a problem to you. It was uncomfortable for 4 hours, and after he left, the unit was disorganized and the staff members were confused.
Jim planned to work with you again in 2 days. The staff members know he is coming and are complaining about him “interfering” with their work. There are some openly aggressive comments made, such as, “He is so stupid. Did you see how he did the dressing change on Mrs. Lucas?” Other comments are passive-aggressive and are complaints about having him on the unit watching staff. You concluded that you are not the only person who is uncomfortable with Jim working with you.
As you see Jim at the change of shift and during report, you notice that his comments to you consistently sound like orders. You find yourself reacting negatively to being talked to this aggressively. Every time you see Jim, you play internal tapes of failed communication, trying out different ways of telling him how you feel about his aggressive communication style. You never share your thoughts or anxiety about working with him again with anyone. You know that you need to do something to make the shift you are going to work with Jim a positive experience for Jim, the staff, and yourself.
Based on the above conflict, answer the following questions:
What is the first critical step you are going to take?
What strategies should you use to resolve the conflict?
What are your rationales for utilizing the strategies that you identified in question 2?
What should you do with any positive results from your actions?
