Hospitals can be a hectic place for one to spend their days. Whether you’re a doctor, nurse, administrator or patient you can easily sense the tension seething under the surface. With such rigid hospital hierarchies within the doctoral ranks, within the nursing structure, and than between all of the core groups that enable a hospital to run there is bound to be serious conflict. That’s why of utmost importance is conflict management. Nurse staff style goes a long way in determining what type of conflict management is appropriate for the hospital.

Nurses play an extremely important role in the every day running of the hospital itself. Not only are they incredibly instrumental as medical support staff they are often the only link between the doctors and the patients. They are the human face of healing when the doctors lack the needed social skills to interact with live patients. For this reason it is vital that the nursing staff run smoothly with a well honed system of daily operations that is understood by all nurses. If, for whatever reasons, problems do occur the conflict management nurse staff style must be consistent and explicit so that it is always carried out equally through different conflicts and fairly irrespective of who is involved.

There is more than one conflict management nurse staff style. Which one is most appropriate to the hospital depends on several factors such as the hospital size, the rigidness of the hospital hierarchy and of course the personal preference of the head nurse in charge.

For a large hospital whose nursing staff exceeds over forty and whose beds are almost always filled an appropriate conflict management nurse staff style would be one whose rules and regulations are clearly demarcated and where there is little room for transgression. In such a setting there is often little time to devote to individualized attention and if policy has been broken than the offender needs to quickly be reprimanded so the offense isn’t twice repeated by them. Not only is this swift carriage of justice a deterrent to the transgressor themselves, but also the other staff who bear witness to the incident.

If the hospital works on a more personal level, where the number of nurses is not so large, where there perhaps might be more time to examine each episode on a case by case basis the conflict management nurse staff style can perhaps afford to be more particular to the situation up for review. Initially there might be a general outline of procedure nurses are expected to follow, and each lapse in that outline would warrant a full examination into the events leading up to the lapse.

Whatever the situation of the hospital at hand, it is important that the conflict management nurse staff style be consistent and reliable and that the nursing staff knows what to expect when conflict does arise.