Understanding healthcare professionals' self-efficacy to resolve interprofessional conflict

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Team Dynamics
• Interprofessional Collaboration
• Conflict Management in Healthcare

Background:

• Unresolved conflict in interprofessional healthcare teams negatively impacts performance, patient safety, and outcomes.
• Limited understanding of healthcare professionals' conflict resolution abilities due to challenges in real-time observation.
• Key factors influencing conflict resolution skills include communication competence, problem-solving, and training.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine the influence of communication competence, problem-solving ability, and conflict resolution education and training on healthcare professionals' perceived conflict resolution skills.

Main Methods:

• Cross-sectional survey design.
• Multiple regression analyses were utilized to assess the impact of identified components.

Main Results:

• Conflict resolution education and training were found to be statistically significant predictors of perceived conflict resolution ability.
• Communication competence also emerged as a statistically significant predictor of perceived conflict resolution ability.
• Problem-solving ability did not show a statistically significant impact in this study.

Conclusions:

• Highlights the critical role of communication competence and conflict resolution education and training in enhancing healthcare professionals' conflict resolution skills.
• Recommends integrating these components into interprofessional pre- and post-licensure education and collaborative practice.
• Emphasizes the need for further research and practical application to improve healthcare team functioning and patient care.