Question

As the Chief of Staff at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre, it has been brought to your attention that there is disagreement between two units at the hospital (Emergency Department & Medical Inpatient Unit) regarding the best way to transfer a patient and provide a handoff report. These handoff reports provide critical patient information to the unit receiving the patient and are very important to maintain continuity of care and ensure patient safety. Since this issue must be resolved quickly, you will need to bring them in to settle the conflict.

Outline what the discussion would look like for each of the 5 conflict management strategies (avoiding, accommodating, competing, compromise, & collaborating). Do not only describe how the technique is done, but link it back to this specific scenario.

Answer 1

5 conflict management strategies can be used as below=

avoiding= In this strategy, the Chief has to persuade the heads of both the department that they should not focus on the conflicting points and all the points that can create a dispute should be left.

accommodating= In this strategy, the Chief can advise the department head to accept some of the points of other department and this has to be done mutually so that both can accept and manage the guidelines of other departments.

competing= In this strategy, the chief can ask both the department head to present their suggestion and the suggestion which he thinks is most suitable in the prevailing situation will be adopted and the suggestions of others will be rejected. So there will be a zero-sum game

compromise= In this method, both the departments can be asked to accept each other's minimum basic suggestions

collaborating= In this method, the chief can ask both the department heads to sit together and discuss the possible outcome that can result in the win-win situation for all