Background: Patient care in Nigeria is essentially an interprofessional teamwork. The functionality of the team may have substantial implications on the quality of patient care as well as the professional satisfaction of individual professionals in the health team. This study was designed to identity if interprofessional conflicts existed in health teams in health institutions in southeast Nigeria, and to explore their nature, course, identify the extant resolution mechanisms and to start to identify and document feasible mechanisms to mitigate the conflicts. The aim is to enhance the functionality of health teams for an overall better patient care outcome.

Method: An online questionnaire survey collected data from 58 health healthcare professionals in four healthcare settings in the southeast of Nigeria. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted resulting in seven central themes of conflict. The paper adopted narrative qualitative survey tools to survey a cohort of healthcare professionals who have practiced for varying periods. This study investigated the existence, or otherwise, and nature of the conflicts within health teams, probes the most at conflict as well as approaches being used in conflict resolution.

Results: Many institutional conflicts existamong the healthcare teams. There are several conflict resolutions approaches that are being employed to resolve the conflicts. Most resolutions are simply the avoidance approach. Many of the conflicts potentially affect patient care out comes but these are issues that could be resolved on a permanent to semi-permanent basis at local levels whilst others are broader institutional issues that will require external fixes.

Discussion: There is a need to improve on the team process for healthcare professional early and systematically. Key or essential steps for doing this based on the importance of continued attentions to better patient care approaches are provided in this paper.

Nigeria, healthcare teams, conflicts, mitigation, and implications

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