The prevention of serious medical errors and patient safety is a mutual goal of all parties involved in healthcare — medical providers, patients, and attorneys. Sadly, consensus commonly ends when a bad outcome occurs. Most disputes over “why” and “how” get resolved via litigation and legal proceedings.
What are the Most Known ADR Models in Healthcare?
Gone are the days when we had to hire attorneys to wade through the lawsuit disputes. Today, it is possible to perform arbitration through video chat thanks to the new technologies that make use of online dispute resolution and smart contracts.
One of the best ways to avoid the lawsuit altogether is to go for ADR (Alternative Dispute Resolution). According to many healthcare systems that use ADR, this approach doesn’t only meet the requirements of both providers and patients but also improves patient safety, encourages disclosure, and reduces costs.
The increased demand for medical errors transparency and consciousness of patient safety has yielded a variety of conflict resolution methods. Alternative Dispute Resolution is a less costly yet more effective approach for medical providers and patients to handle adverse events. It usually involves early neutral evaluation, mediation, conciliation, and arbitration.
With increasing trials including litigations and rising court expenses, more and more healthcare systems are opting for an ADR program. Some of the best known models include:
- VA Model (Department of Veterans Affairs)
- University of Michigan Model
- Internal Neutral Mediator Model
- Rush Model
Where and How to Provide Conflict Management Training?
Providing education and training for healthcare medical staff takes diverse forms. Online courses (like ACLS, PALS, and BLS courses) provides a great opportunity to licensed medical providers to learn many useful things out of the clinical nursing environment.
Such an education usually may take place at a workshop and conference. It can also be performed within the clinical settings through Human Resources Development Programs, staff meetings, grand rounds, leadership development courses, as well as internal journals and websites.
Training Strategies and Programs
There is a wide range of training strategies that help healthcare professionals and nurses resolve the conflicts within the clinics. That can also make them work together at different levels and cope with collaboration issues by analyzing each problem and locating valuable resources. That way they will be trained to properly care for their patients.
It is critical to take certain steps in taking care of patient safety, such as assessment, diagnosis of the illness or disease, and creation of treatment plans. These steps should be followed by the assessment of treatments and modification of initial plans if needed. Once all of these steps are taken, a clinic or healthcare organization can start to integrate skill development courses into training programs.
A big change is happening in healthcare as the system tends to provide better care to patients and improve their safety through better collaboration. However, this change can be truly successful only if healthcare organizations have more nurses as well as physicians with adequate skills for managing conflict. Such healthcare practitioners will be good problem solvers with creative solutions for complex problems.