NURSE MANAGEMENT OF CONFLICTS WITH PHYSICIANS IN EMERGENCY ROOMS.
Contributors: University Of Illinois At Chicago, Health Sciences Center.
Published: 1994
Number of pages: 181
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: A total of 196 nurses from 36 randomly-selected emergency rooms in Illinois completed the written survey for this cross-sectional study of the styles used by nurses to manage conflicts with physicians. A modified version of Fishbein and Ajzen's "Theory of Reasoned Action" was used to develop the theoretical framework and the propositions for this research. Constructs were operationalized by three separate instruments: The Organizational Culture Inventory (Cooke & Lafferty, 1989); The Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory-II (Rahim, 1983); and nine conflict scenarios developed by the researcher to measure nurses' intentions to use six different conflict management styles and beliefs about physicians' use of five conflict management style.

The conflict management style nurses expect physicians to use, along with nurses' perception of strong aggressive/defensive norms-competitive norms in their work group explained a moderate amount of the variance in nurses intentions to proactively manage conflicts with physicians. Furthermore, work group norms generally explained individual nurses' perceptions of those norms (i.e., subjective norms) and nurses' intentions to engage in specific conflict management behaviors predicted their actual conflict management behaviors--but not exactly as hypothesized. Inconsistent with past research, constructive norms (i.e., those that encourage humanistic, self-actualizing, affiliative and achievement behaviors) were not associated with nurses' intentions to proactively manage physician-nurse conflicts. This unexpected finding possibly resulted from the rigid hierarchical structures that characterized the hospitals in the study and precluded the potentially positive impact of strong constructive norms on conflict management. Administrators and nursing educators might implement strategies that develop aggressive norms in nurse work groups to increase nursing input into patient care decisions. Further research is recommended to replicate findings and to identify the organizational outcomes associated with the proactive management of conflict by nurses.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 55-09, Section: B, page: 3817.

Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO, HEALTH SCIENCES CENTER, 1994.

School code: 0806.