Managing Labor Relations in Greek Hospitals—A Nursing Approach

Conflicts are one of the most difficult problems healthcare executives have to deal with, while education on their effective management is of the utmost importance. They can be observed among the personnel of the same or a different service, either to peers or superiors, to the patients and their family environment, as well as the doctors of the institution. A hospital, being a complex organization, with heterogeneity in the skills, tasks or responsibilities of the workforce, often manages such conflicts through communication skills the administrative personnel acquires. The purpose of this study is to investigate the causes and effects of conflicts among nurses’ working relations as well as their interaction with other healthcare professionals in Greek Hospitals. An effort is made to compare the sample between the public service and the private sector and to explore the effectiveness of how nurses manage conflicts. In contrast to other studies, public and private sector hospital employees appear to have a similar stance toward conflicts and the ways to overcome the stress they cause. To resolve them, they mainly use a consensual style of solving while avoiding conflict at work.