Avoiding Difficult Conversations in the Australian Health Sector

BACKGROUND: Health professionals avoiding difficult conversations with each other can lead to serious negative consequences for patients. Clinical supervisors are in the unique position of interacting both with students as well as colleagues and peers. This study explores the avoidance of difficult conversations from the perspective of clinical supervisors in order to better understand why health professionals avoid difficult conversations. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to identify the reasons why difficult conversations are avoided between health-care professionals and to gain deeper insight into the phenomenon of avoiding difficult conversations in general. METHODS: Convergent interviewing was used with 20 clinical supervisors to explore the following question: Why do you think that people in your workplace avoid difficult conversations? RESULTS: Major reasons for avoiding difficult conversations included the fear of negative consequences, a general distaste for confrontation, and a lack of confidence in their skills to have such conversations. Additional factors included individual qualities such as personality type and communication style, available time, size of the workplace, and a range of perceived cultural barriers standing in the way of having difficult conversations. CONCLUSION: There is a need to encourage clinical supervisors and other health professionals to embrace difficult conversations to reduce adverse events and enhance patient outcomes. This requires additional training and educational opportunities to enhance knowledge, skills, and confidence to plan and engage in difficult conversations. Some types of difficult conversations require more skills than others.