Managing Conflict in Institutional Nursing: A Risk or an Opportunity?

Abstract

It was a matter of communicating bad news and it was the Director of Nursing himself who was trying to inform the nurses in the operating room of a series of extraordinary measures as a consequence of the application of the recently approved decree of cuts in the area of ​​public administration (salary reductions, increase in working hours, suspension and readjustment of extras, incentives, etc.). The discomfort among the assistants grew as the insidious measures were explained, with the precision of a surgeon, which were going to have a decisive impact on the life of each one. Faces of perplexity and indignation when realizing that in the logic of the manager people were just numbers that were easy to square with a rudimentary balance between operators and working hours, even making it seem that some could be redundant. Any attempt at reasoning was immediately cut short by a single argument, monotonous and heavy as a slab, like the bundle of papers that she brandished in her raised fist in a mixture of indignation and hidden joy: "I did not make this decree, whatever you have to say about it, you know who is responsible." The impertinent argument of the figures frustrated any attempt at dialogue (Julian Marias said that reason is always narrative). Everything ended with an angry refusal to give further explanations. Among the nurses there were no more reactions than the conversations during shift changes and the refusal to collaborate with the supervisors in some activities that involved voluntary work