Conflict in the workplace negatively affects the quality of care for the clients.

    Conflict in the workplace negatively affects the quality of care for the clients. Conflict between nurses in the workplace can take away time that should be spent taking care of the patients. I know in my facility it can also cause detrimental effects as well. An example of this would be mental illness. I work in a psychiatric hospital. There have been times that nurses will either be in conflict in the medication room or out in the hallway and not being aware of their surroundings. We have patients who have PTSD. We have patients that are paranoid schizophrenic. This creates issues that affects the patients directly and could cause them to have a mental break or psychotic episode that could have been easily avoided if the conflict was handled professionally behind closed doors. Another example is a conflict in the medication room. This could easily distract a nurse causing a medication error. An example I have witnessed was a nurse having a conflict with a coworker. She did not pay attention to all of her medications and gave the wrong medication to the wrong patient. This was not life threatening but could have been and these things could be avoided. Kimberly wrote: Conflict in the workplace affects quality of care in many ways. If there is a conflict between nurses they are not willing to help each other out. There is sometimes direct deceitful behaviors that is done to each other like leaving out information in report or not telling a nurse that their patient has called out. I do not handle conflict well but have found that directly talking to the nurse in a private way helps. It can help clarify what the conflict is. Speaking in a private situation removes the influence of others or the need to keep up appearances. I personally work on a labor and delivery unit. We regularly have emergencies and need to help each other and watch each others patients. I personally have had a conflict with another nurse and one day after yelling at each other, we stepped aside into a private room and apologized and discussed what the main problem was. It was a difficult conversation that required a lot of maturity and humility but now we have a good relationship and help each other. DISCUSSION 1B 1. How do you define quality of care? 2. What factors can you control, as a manager, for your staff to provide high-quality care (which factors are internal and which are external)? 3. If an organization is deciding between several quality management programs which would you recommend and why?