Joint Commission’s Foundational Principles of Conflict Management:

• acknowledging and addressing conflict
• educating and training all stakeholders
• holding stakeholders accountable
• mutual respect
• commitment to fairness
• development of a conflict management process
• open communication
• acceptance and tolerance of differences

Adherence to these standards protects the patient’s safety and quality of care. According to the standards, your organization should be competent in dealing with a range of potential conflicts. The ability to manage conflict and conflict resolution are essential core competencies within your organization.

The Joint Commission Standards for Managing Conflict

• Are your policies and procedures consistent with the Joint Commission standards?
• Has your organization clearly designed processes to resolving conflicts?
• Is your organization – its leaders and staff – conflict competent?
• Are you confident that patient safety and quality of care is not threatened by unprofessional /disruptive behaviors or unaddressed workplace conflicts?

If your answer is NO to any of the above, your organization is at the risk of NOT providing excellence in quality patient care. Healthcare organizations that do not deal competently with conflict expose themselves to the high cost of litigation from both employees and patients.

The Joint Commission standards require that “the organization manages conflict between leadership groups to protect the quality and safety of care,” and the Joint Commission recognizes that “conflict among [leadership groups] with regard to accountabilities, policies, practices, and procedures that is not managed effectively ... has the potential to threaten health care safety and quality.”

The Standards Explained:

The standards imply that senior managers and medical staff leaders should work with their Board to develop an ongoing process for managing conflict among leadership groups, and requires Board approval of the process. At a minimum, your organization's conflict management process must include:

• meeting with the involved parties as early as possible to identify the conflict;
• gathering information regarding the conflict; and
• working with the parties to manage and where possible resolve the conflict

According to the standard “it is important that organization identify an individual skilled in managing conflict who can help the organization implement its conflict management process” and that individuals who help to implement a conflict management process -whether from inside or outside the organization- should be skilled in conflict management.

Additionally the standards require your organization to measure the culture of your facility and as part of standard LD.3.10, along with measuring the organization's culture of safety, your facility is required to make changes within the organization based on the results of those measurements.

Your facility is also required to have a code of conduct that outlines how to manage disruptive staff behavior- and disruptive behavior is not necessarily screaming and shouting- it can be as simple as a lack of co-operation. To address these concerns the Joint Commission has suggested leaders take the following actions to prevent these behaviors among staff members:

• Provide education and training for healthcare providers about professional behavior and appropriate interactions with coworkers
• Create accountability for maintaining appropriate behavior
• Establish a zero-tolerance policy for disruptive behaviors and a means for enforcing this policy
• Craft non confrontational methods for reporting and addressing inappropriate behavior

How Polarity Human Relationships Can Help You:

We know that policies and procedures don’t work on their own- they need your leaders, managers, and employees to make them work. In other words your entire staff must understand their need, believe in the approaches you adapt, and commit to creating a collaborative culture towards your patient care.

At Polarity Human Relationships we provide a range of services to address these needs and to work with you to ensure your organization or health care facility builds a credible and robust conflict management process that creates a collaborative working environment for your patients and staff. Our approach is to assist you develop or review your processes to ensure your organization has implemented a simple, easy to understand policies and procedures that are effective in sustaining a culture of patient care.

How We Can Assist Your Facility

Working in partnership with organizations, Polarity Human Relationships provides sustainable solutions to facilitate the implementation of the Joint Commission’s leadership standards for managing conflict. These solutions include applying our AISDR^SM model for conflict competent organizations. Our AISDR^SM model can be applied as a fully systemic process or in custom-made phases to match your immediate requirements. Our AISDR^SM model includes the following phases or steps:

• Assessment of the organization's exposure to damaging conflict and the development of appropriate pillars that align your strategies to create a conflict competent organization
• Identification and development of appropriate Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and measurements that are required to sustain a conflict competent facility
• Support of the pillars needed to sustain a conflict competent organization while aligning your policies and procedures to meet these goals
• Development of Senior Leaders and their teams to understand and model conflict competent behaviors
• Reinforcement of conflict competent skills among all staff members

Although we recommend a holistic method of creating and sustaining your organization's approach to conflict management, any phase of our AISDR^SM model can be applied depending on your specific needs and resources. Our team will work in partnership with your organization to ensure the measures and supports that are introduced meet your specific needs while encouraging the development of a conflict competent culture. Our approach enhances your bottom line in patient safety and quality of care.