Conflicts as the interaction of several individuals or groups representing opposing interests is a fairly common phenomenon in the realities of modernity. It is logical to assume that in any sphere where a person has the opportunity to come into contact with another person, these clashes can arise. Thus, medicine, as an integral part of the “healthy” functioning of society, is also subject to these risks. Conflicts in medicine are usually in the dyad “patient – medical worker”, but there are also “medical worker – medical worker”, or “medical worker – medical organization”, or a conflict between several medical organizations, it should be noted that the most frequently practiced is the first case and we will consider it in more detail.
A medical conflict involves a disagreement between a patient and a doctor regarding each other’s position. Reasons for this can be: a state of personality (the patient or doctor may be in a life stressful situation), lack of information about the conflict opponent, limited outlook (often the patient simply does not understand the doctor due to medical terminology in his speech), different levels of conflict motives. All of these reasons can be combined into one big psychological aspect of conflict. This aspect is of greater importance to patients. They usually write complaints about poor service, about the difficult relationship between the doctor and the patient, about the level of competence and qualifications of medical professionals. There is also the legal aspect of medical conflicts, when the consequences appear as a threat of civil and criminal liability, primarily for the medical worker.
With the penetration of knowledge of business ethics, financial and legal literacy into public life, the activity of citizens in the sphere of protection of their rights in medical care has increased, respectively, an acute social need for the introduction and spread of mediation and conciliation procedures in health care has developed.
Thus, the term “medical mediation” appeared in medical practice. The goal of mediation is to facilitate the ability of the participants in a dispute to resolve their conflict independently, to their mutual satisfaction and mutual benefit. The effectiveness of such a settlement is achieved by unlocking the ability of the disputing parties to cooperate and communicate through purposeful, future-oriented actions. It is worth noting that medical mediation is a specific field. it deals with the resolution of medical disputes (conflicts), where the case concerns the protection of human health and life, which are considered the most complex legal disputes.
The introduction of mediation in medical practice allows to resolve numerous conflicts in a preliminary pre-trial procedure, which greatly simplifies the process of conflict resolution between the patient and the medical worker, as a result, without leaving negative emotions and negative consequences for each of the parties to the conflict.