Health care mediation: Promoting workplace collaboration and patient safety

Conflict on the health care team not only impacts the workplace experience for the health care professionals, but can threaten patient safety. This chapter focuses on the uses of mediation and mediation skills to address conflict within the health care team or between members of the health care team and patients or their families. In spite of the still-emergent use of mediation in the health care context, Thorpe highlighted several aspects of mediation that are valuable in this context, including: concerns for privacy and confidentiality, reduction of time and costs as compared to judicial proceedings, and management and preservation of relationships. Although the health care field has not adopted alternative dispute resolution systems as widely as some other professions, there is real potential for mediation to make a significant positive difference in this context. The chapter offers few suggestions related to that. Mediators could provide education for physicians about interpersonal communication and behaviors that will reduce conflict.