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Irish Hospice Foundation
Toolkit for Compassionate End-of-Life Care
Dealing with conʛict End-of-life care is challenging work. When people are at their most vulnerable, raw emotions often come to the surface. Patients and those close to them may display anger towards you. Healthcare workers often have to manage these situations with sensitivity and compassion. Here are some tips for dealing with conflict: • Each conflict situation has three elements – you, the other person (or people) and the situation. You only have control over one of these elements – YOU. • You may have some knowledge of the situation, and you can use this knowledge to defuse things. • You have absolutely no control over the other person. Telling them to calm down or not to worry is probably not going to work! • Never lose your cool or become angry and upset. If you feel like this is going to happen, then withdraw from the situation. Seek support from a colleague who can intervene. • You can use your communication skills, conversation tone and volume to try and defuse a conflict situation using the following approaches: - If they are shouting loudly, you speak assertively but with lower volume. - If they are speaking fast, you speak at a slower pace. - If they are waving their arms around gesturing vigorously, you have to display calm, open and non- threatening body language. • Remember the heat of anger tends to flare passionately for only a short time. If you maintain your communication skills, you should be able to dampen the flames. • It is important to first and foremost acknowledge the other person’s feelings. “I can see you are very angry”, “I can see how upset you are”. • Find out the assumptions which the other person has made, to which they are reacting with their feelings. “Can you tell me what you understand about…”, “Can you tell me what has happened”. • Only when you have acknowledged their feelings and found out their assumptions can you then begin to establish the facts and bring clarity to the situation. • Once the anger has gone from the situation, you can help build rapport by matching the other person’s communication and mirroring their body language. Mirroring the other person’s body language (their seating position, posture, gestures and expressions) is a good way to show empathy, create a bond and enhance the connection. • Never take anger as a personal attack on you; it is very unlikely that it is about you. • ere may be a legitimate reason for the anger. Make sure that your resolution involves addressing the root cause, whether this be in dealing with it directly yourself, or reporting it to the relevant person.
Communication 2
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