Assessing the effect of demographic factors on conflict situations in Ghana government hospitals

Abstract

The study seeks to examine the influence of demographic factors on conflict in Ghana government hospitals. It adopted the quantitative approach which involves the use of questionnaires and interviews coupled with statistical analysis to assess the effect of demographic factors (age, educational level, gender and number of years on the job of employees) and conflict occurrences at the workplace. The use of purposive and convenience sampling techniques were adopted to get a sample of 123 employees and 10 heads or deputy heads of human resource of the ten regional hospitals in Ghana. The study found out that there is association between these demographic factors and conflict occurrences at these hospitals with 95% confidence level. It therefore recommends to management of these hospitals and other policy makers to pay much attention to these factors when formulating policies so that they meet the expectation of different categories of employees at the workplace. 1. INTRODUCTION Workplace conflict is a universal organizational phenomenon because it is inevitable aspect of modern life. For any organization to perform well to achieve its objectives, different teams and individuals of different age, sex, gender and marital status must work together and create relationships across organizational lines and groups. In the flow of work and information, individuals, groups and departments depend on each other for information sharing, assistance or coordinated action. For example, in the hospital environment, doctors will depend on nurses, lab technicians, x-­‐ray attendants and pharmacists to collate the needed and relevant information to assist their patients in the recovery process. Without the help of the personnel mentioned above, the work of the medical doctor will be very difficult especially if there are disagreements among them. In the same way, the pharmacist will depend on the medical doctor in the area of prescriptions. Such interdependence may either foster cooperation or conflict. The hospital environment is a mixture of different categories of people with different background in terms of age, gender, education, religion, beliefs and tribe and as mentioned by Collier (2006) such differences are potential causes of conflict in organizations. Again, the hospital is the only working environment where its customers patronized its service when they have health related problems and it can range from a simple disease to a complicated health condition hence makes the hospital a conflict prone workplace. As people with different backgrounds, age, gender, sex, values, needs and personalities interact with each other, conflicts are bound to develop. Moreover where one party does not have a sound mind then the probability that the person will not reason up with the other party is high and hence disagreement is likely to occur. Taking the second largest government hospital (Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital) as an example, according to the first half year report of the Ministry of Health for 2012, a total of 150,430 patients visited the Outpatient Department (OPD) whilst 199,176 also visited the OPD of the teaching hospital in 2011. These patients come to the OPD with varying degrees of health related disease and complications. Added to this, the government hospitals is one of the public institutions that absorbs a large number of employees in the public sector and these employees apart from the fact that they are different in terms of their values and needs are also demographically different in terms of sex, educational level, income level, marital status, occupation and religion. As already indicated, it appears these differences in demographic factors together with the fact that the hospital is the only institution whose services are patronized when people have health related problems makes the hospital environment a place where conflict can easily occur. In support of this, the literature from American College of Physician Executives’ (2009) indicated that 98% of those surveyed had witnessed an incident of disruptive behavior between nurses and physicians. In another study by Anderson and D’Antonio (2005), about 50% of physician’s time is spent on conflict. This according to the writers stem from the fact that the hospital is among the few organizations that normally does not segment or target specific customers. Demographically, all people of different age, sex, marital status, religion and occupation are expected to patronize in the services of these hospitals. Now the question one may ask is that, looking at the fact that these demographic factors are not homogenous and as such there are differences in age, gender, religion and marital status, is it prudent for health professionals to spend most of their time taking into consideration differences in these factors when dealing with patients and their fellow colleagues since their thinking, reasoning, perception, values and needs are not the same? In answering such a question, Studdert et al (2010) are of the view that the uniqueness of the hospital environment demands that health professionals are tolerant in all situations and in the worse case when conflict occurs as a result of differences in reasoning, perception and thinking, they needed to be dealt with in a swift manner in order to avoid loss of human lives. Whilst we may agree with the writers, it is also true that one need to really examine what brings these differences in reasoning, perception and thinking and its effect on conflict occurrences. In light of this, the researchers decided to go into this research to look at the effect of these demographic factors on conflict occurrences in government hospitals in Ghana since though many research had been done on conflict and its occurrences, there is little on isolating these demographic factors and their consequences on conflict occurrence. Second in terms of Ghanaian context, literature available to the researchers indicates that proper