Workplace interpersonal conflicts among the healthcare workers: Retrospective exploration from the institutional incident reporting system of a university-affiliated medical center.
OBJECTIVE
There have been concerns about the workplace interpersonal conflict (WIC) among healthcare workers. As healthcare organizations have applied the incident reporting system (IRS) widely for safety-related incidents, we proposed that this system might provide a channel to explore the WICs.


METHODS
We retrospectively reviewed the reports to the IRS from July 2010 to June 2013 in a medical center. We identified the WICs and typed these conflicts according to the two foci (task content/process and interpersonal relationship) and the three properties (disagreement, interference, and negative emotion), and analyzed relevant data.


RESULTS
Of the 147 incidents with WIC, the most common related processes were patient transfer (20%), laboratory tests (17%), surgery (16%) and medical imaging (16%). All of the 147 incidents with WIC focused on task content or task process, but 41 (27.9%) also focused on the interpersonal relationship. We found disagreement, interference, and negative emotion in 91.2%, 88.4%, and 55.8% of the cases, respectively. Nurses (57%) were most often the reporting workers, while the most common encounter was the nurse-doctor interaction (33%), and the majority (67%) of the conflicts were experienced concurrently with the incidents. There was a significant difference in the distribution of worker job types between cases focused on the interpersonal relationship and those without (p = 0.0064). The doctors were more frequently as the reporter when the conflicts focused on the interpersonal relationship (34.1%) than not on it (17.0%). The distributions of worker job types were similar between those with and without negative emotion (p = 0.125).


CONCLUSIONS
The institutional IRS is a useful place to report the workplace interpersonal conflicts actively. The healthcare systems need to improve the channels to communicate, manage and resolve these conflicts.
Center for Quality Management, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan.|Department of Internal Medicine, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan.
Jih-Shuin
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5324-8523
JS
Jerng
Center for Quality Management, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan.|Department of Nursing, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan.
Szu-Fen
SF
Huang
Center for Quality Management, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan.|Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan.
Huey-Wen
HW
Liang
Center for Quality Management, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan.
Li-Chin
LC
Chen
Center for Quality Management, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan.
Chia-Kuei
CK
Lin
Center for Quality Management, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan.
Hsiao-Fang
HF
Huang
Center for Quality Management, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan.
Ming-Yuan
MY
Hsieh
Center for Quality Management, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan.|Department of Orthopedic Surgery, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan.
Jui-Sheng
JS
Sun
D000046:Academic Medical Centers; D000818:Animals; D003695:Delivery of Health Care; D004644:Emotions; D006282:Health Personnel; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D009726:Nurses; D010820:Physicians; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012308:Risk Management; D013624:Taiwan; D017132:Workplace