Barriers to Conflict Resolution in Home Hospice Care

Barriers to Conflict Resolution in Home Hospice Care

Organizations, particularly healthcare settings, are faced with inter-professional conflicts. The article by Brown et al. emphasizes the barriers to conflict resolution, which include the individual in less powerful positions, insufficient time and workload, lack of motivation and recognition of a given conflict, and emotional discomfort arising from one’s fear to confront a conflict. Hospice care management, for instance, is much vulnerable to conflicts patients and staff, and among the workers themselves in the course of their practice. The paper explores the theme of barriers to conflict resolution as eminent in Hospice care management.

Hospice care encompasses considerable workload, and practitioners execute their roles within limited time frames, thereby making it cumbersome to resolve conflict. Besides, the workload provides professionals with inadequate time for communication. Team conflicts escalate when particular concerns do not become resolved, and the increase in workload can result in frustrations of workers, making it much difficult to solve a problem (Brown et al., 2011, p. 7). Besides, delivering care to critically ill individuals is associated with inherent stress. Breffni et al. (2015, p. 1) argue that hospice care entails the management of several communicable, non-communicable, and incurable diseases, trauma, and injuries. The workload can facilitate disruptive or inappropriate behavior among individuals, thereby affecting the quality of care and morale of practitioners. Based on time and workload, Hospice care gets characterized by competing for operational and clinical priorities, which prevent the practitioners’ consistent focus on managing and preventing conflicts.

Teamwork and informed decision making require the inclusion of the opinions of every member. However, conflicts in healthcare settings become challenging to solve when the practitioners occupy much lower positions whim makes them silenced, resentful, and intimidated in the case of a problem. Brown et al. (2011, p. 7) argue that authority, power, or leadership in healthcare settings exacerbates and hinders the resolution of conflict. Practitioners with now authority or who occupy lower ranks of leadership may not become listened to when they make complaints regarding a situation. As a result, they avoid airing their opinions in an attempt to avoid frustrations when they get ignored. For instance, nurse practitioners do not disagree with their superiors based on the held notion that leaders have absolute responsibility for situations and that they are always “right.” The conflict that arises from the dignity and self-determination of a patient stems from several theoretical perspectives, professional values, and personal perceptions to end one’s life. Differences in the hierarchy make it difficult for nurses to assume control in orchestrating patient’s care goals as other team members will consider such actions as invalid professional judgments. Occupying a much less position hinders collaborative teamwork in the development of patient’s goals of care. (Green, 2017, p. 38).

Correspondingly, lack of motivation and failure to address and recognize an existing conflict, respectively, can considerably bur its resolution. In the instance, a nurse is not willing to address a problem or is ignoring the existence of a problem, and conflict mitigation becomes hindered. According to Brown et al. (2011, p. 7), the motivation to solve a problem relinquishes when practitioners take not of the problem but choose not to talk about nor address it. The lack of motivation attributes to specific individual’s personalities of conflict avoidance, aggressions, and defensiveness. Typically, individuals’ perceptions of collaboration and teamwork vary considerably. In Hospice care, the collaboration among professionals, as well as the incorporations of appropriate communication, gets skewed by the tendency to ignore and avoid addressing a particular problem.

The core objective of hospice care is to provide the best death possible to patients. However, different members of the interdisciplinary hospice team have different perceptions regarding the attainment of their goals. Certain interdependencies and working relations can result in social and operational problems that impact an individual’s ability to provide quality care. NASW (2015) posits that the fear of a colleague’s emotional distress inhibits individuals from performing their roles or cross into the roles of other professionals. Besides, balancing emotion and reason can come between how an individual performs their duties, thereby demeaning the essence of mutual acceptance as coercion gets used to getting rid of conflicts. Perceptions of emotional distress are also associated with the poor and biased understanding of the interests of others, decreased reliability, and poor communication. Green (2017, p14) posits that poor communication around such behaviors can lead to team conflict.

Moreover, individuals may avoid confronting a conflict for fear of causing emotional distress to other staff or the patient (Brown et al., 2011, p. 7). Caregivers feel hostile and neglect to obtain support or seek help from their colleagues in fear of burdening them. As a result, they have difficulty concentrating and may conspire to remain silent about a conflict. Notably, avoidance and suppression of incidences or activities have a long term negative impact, which includes difficult decision making during a patient crisis. Psychological, as well as emotional distress, impact the provision of care to patients and the whole process of prognosis (Pasithorn et al. 2018, p. 780). Lack of interest, time, or confidence, as well as the notions that conflict should become suppressed or avoided to keep at peace inhibit addressing a conflict

References

Breffni H, Camilla Z, Felicia M., Richard A., Faith N., and Gary R. (2015). Provision of Palliative Care in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Overcoming Obstacles For Effective Treatment Delivery. Journal of clinical oncology.

Green, Sarah. (2017). Making it Right in the End: Conflict on the Hospice Interdisciplinary Team

Judith Brown, Laura Lewis, Kathy Ellis, Moira Stewart, Thomas R. Freeman & M. Janet Kasperski (2011) Conflict on interprofessional primary health care teams – can it be resolved?, Journal of Interprofessional Care, 25:1, 4-10

National Association of Social Workers. (2015). “Code of ethics of the national association of
social workers.” Retrieved online from <https://www.socialworkers.org/pubs/code/code.asp>

Pasithorn A., Ari C., Tuba, Jane F., Maria J., Lona, M, and Arden M. Surgeons’ Perceived Barriers to Palliative and End-of-Life Care: A Mixed Methods Study of a Surgical Society. Journal of Palliative Medicine.780-788