Workplace interpersonal conflicts among the healthcare workers: Retrospective exploration from the institutional incident reporting system of a university-affiliated medical center

<div><p>Objective</p><p>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.</p><p>Methods</p><p>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.</p><p>Results</p><p>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).</p><p>Conclusions</p><p>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.</p></div

Personnel involved and interpersonal relationship.

<p>Personnel involved and interpersonal relationship.</p

Workplace interpersonal conflicts: Related processes and tasks (n = 147).

<p>Workplace interpersonal conflicts: Related processes and tasks (n = 147).</p

Workplace interpersonal conflicts: Examples.

<p>Workplace interpersonal conflicts: Examples.</p

Personnel involved and interpersonal relationship.

<p>Personnel involved and interpersonal relationship.</p

Workplace interpersonal conflicts and severities of incidents.

<p>Workplace interpersonal conflicts and severities of incidents.</p

Safety-related incidents during the study period.

<p>Safety-related incidents during the study period.</p

Workplace interpersonal conflicts: Types of the 147 incidents.

<p>Workplace interpersonal conflicts: Types of the 147 incidents.</p

Personnel involved and negative emotion.

<p>Personnel involved and negative emotion.</p

Workplace Interpersonal Conflicts: Summary of Definitions^*.

<p>Workplace Interpersonal Conflicts: Summary of Definitions^{<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0171696#t001fn001" target="_blank">*</a>}.</p