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Ask the expert: Resolving conflict among interdisciplinary teams

HCPro's Weekly Update on the ANCC Magnet Recognition Program®*, December 4, 2007

This week, a reader asks how to manage interdisciplinary conflict. Read the response from our advisor Diana Swihart, PhD, DMin, MSN, CS, APRN, BC, CNS, clinical nurse specialist, nursing education, at Bay Pines VA Healthcare System in Bay Pines, FL.

Q: How do you manage interdisciplinary conflict?

A: Creative conflict resolution activities and approaches among interdisciplinary teams are embedded in collegial and collaborative partnerships. Personnel policies and processes addressing conflict management involve all disciplines and ensure that all staff members' rights are respected. Such policies and processes promote positive patient outcomes by encouraging safe, professional practice settings in which healthcare providers enjoy collaborative, mutually respectful relationships.

Unit-based shared governance councils are used to address and resolve conflict among healthcare team members at the staff level without affecting patient care outcomes whenever possible. For example, let's examine how a situation of interdisciplinary conflict between nurses and housekeepers can be resolved. The nurses begin to complain that housekeepers are not cleaning rooms properly between patient admissions. The nurse manager meets with the nurses and housekeeping staff, including the director of housekeeping, and learns that the housekeeping department lost three of its five employees during the past month and has not yet replaced them. The resolution involves nurses agreeing to share some of the responsibilities for cleaning rooms between admissions in emergent situations. They also change their patient flow board to identify when patients leave to improve communication between services. The situation is resolved so well that when the new housekeeping staff members are hired, the change in how they use the patient flow board proves so effective that both services decide to keep it.

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