Healthcare professionals work in a stressful environment, as such, incidences of conflict are common and frequent. Unresolved conflict develops problems such as work dysfunction, increased employee stress, and patient discomfort. As such, healthcare managers must have strong conflict management skills to address the disruptive and challenging tendencies brought about by conflict.
While working in a hospital, one of the most common sources of conflict I identified is unequal workload distribution. This problem often increased complaints, thus disrupting normal day-to-day functioning and resulting in increased employee turnover. Some of the effective conflict management skills that the hospital administration employed included effective communication and active listening.
Effective communication clears communication breakdown while active listening shows that management cares and respects the opinions of different individuals. These skills were instrumental in addressing workload inequality. By actively listening to employees, the healthcare managers were able to identify unfair delegation of duties by senior staff members as the reason why several junior staff members complained that they had double the expected workload. Also, the healthcare managers employed effective communication to direct workload distribution, hence solving this problem. Moreover, the use of effective communication also ensured that all hospital staff members and the management were on the same page hence it streamlined communication.
