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Abstract Healthcare organizations constitute complex work places, where healthcare professionals coming from different disciplines, educational status and under stressful environment, have to work side by side aiming to provide quality health services. Collaboration among multidiscipline groups is difficult enough, with conflict arising as a daily challenge. This study aimed at examining the relationship between conflict and work environment stressors among nurses working at a General Hospital through: Identifying types of conflict among nurses working at a General Hospital , Identifying conflict management strategies used by nurses working at a General Hospital, Assessing levels of work environment stressors among nurses working at a General Hospital and Finding out the relationship between conflict and work environment stressors among nurses working at a General Hospital. The subjects of this study were 108 nurses who were working at medical, surgical and intensive care units at Kafr Elshiekh General Hospital. Three tools were used for collecting data: The first tool: Perceived conflict scale: It includes two parts: 1st Part: aimed to collect socio demographic data about nurses such as; age, level of education, years of experience, and training program. 2nd part: It aimed at assessing conflict types. The second tool: Thomas -Killman conflict mode instrument questionnaire it aimed to assess conflict management strategies. The third tool: Stress rating scale: It aimed at assessing for nurse’s stress level. The present study findings revealed that the following main results: • More half of staff nurses are suffering from high conflict level (53.7%) In addition, the intragroup conflict type was the highest type present in the studied sample (97.0%). • Most of the study subjects used competing strategy (66.7%) followed by accommodating strategy (46.3%). • More than half of staff nurses are suffering from high level of total work environment stressors (68.5%) and conflict with physician was the highest stressor (88.9%). • More than half of staff nurses working at critical care unite suffering from interpersonal conflict (57.1%). • Staff nurses who have technical institute of nursing diploma suffered from high percent of intrapersonal conflict (33.3%) and they most use of competing strategy (85.2%). • Avoiding strategy was highest strategy used by nurses who attending training courses (48%). • There is no relation of statistical significance between socio-demographic characteristics of staff nurses and intragroup, intergroup, total conflict type. • The finding of current study revealed there is no association of significance between socio-demographic characteristics and some conflict strategies such as collaborating and accommodating. • Most of staff nurses working at critical care unites suffering from stress (81%) and among nurses having bachelor degree (83.7%). • The finding of current study revealed statistical significance between work environment stressors and intra-personal conflict, intra-group conflict and the total conflict. • There is no association of significance were noted between workplace stress and conflict resolution strategies. • There is a statistical significance relation between total conflict and some of work environment stressors as: death / dying patient, uncertainty concerning treatment, workload, understaffing, nurses capability and total stress. • Lastly the results have shown that there is a significant positive correlation between nurses’ conflict and stress scores. • Based on the results, the study recommended that training courses to develop nurses’ skills in dealing with conflict. Enhancing stress coping strategies through counseling programs. Hospital administration must keep line of communication opened between staff nurses and nursing managers through meeting, and conferences to explore work issues and problems and find appropriate solutions. |