Causes of Conflicts Encountered by Nurse Managers in Hospitals and Their Approaches in Conflicts Management

Aim: This research was designed to determine the causes of conflicts encountered in their work environment by nurse managers working in hospitals in Trabzon and their approaches regarding the conflict management.

Method: The population of research included 165 nurses, and the sample included 123 nurses working a university, states hospitals in the center and counties of Trabzon. Data was collected between March-August 2007 by using a questinnaire containing 14 questions, a scale for organizational conflict causes, and organizational conflict scale of Rahim, and tested with percentage, average, correlation, Cronbach Alpha, Factor analysis, ANOVA, t test, Mann-Whitney U ve Kruskal Wallis tests.

Results: It was defined that nurse managers mostly experience conflicts due to the workload (3.65), being rewarded and having filled expectations (3.43), having authorization (3.11), and workplace conditions and necessities (3.10). As for their approaches to resolute the conflicts, nurse managers were found out to either be able to solve the conflict they experience or try to overcome it (3.55). Besides these results, subscales in the study reveal that nurse managers firstly use integration (4.35), later reconciliation (4.18) and then adaptation approaches (3.37) while they prefer using domination and abstention approaches less than the ones above. According to hospitals, it was determined tht the nurse managers in university hospitals experience more conflicts (χ²=8.15; p= 0.017).

Conclusion: Nurse managers experienced conflicts about extreme workload, not rewarding of nurses and unfilling their expectations, having lack of authorization etc. especially in the university hospital. In this respect, the university hospital should specially be developed politics and arranged educations regarding conflict management,