While working as a carer, you may encounter conflict with and between other people. Conflict, or challenging behaviour, is often caused because of distress or needs not being met. These are just a few of the factors that could cause conflict:
Biological: Conflict caused because the individual is in pain for biological reasons, such as if they are suffering the side effects of medication or substance misuse.
Social: Conflict caused because an individual’s social needs have not been met. They may be bored or wanting social contact or are not able to communicate or understand what is being said.
Environmental: Conflict caused by environmental factors that cause them distress, such as loud noise or barriers to mobility.
Psychological: Conflict caused because of how the individual is feeling psychologically. For example, they may feel left out or lonely.
Some of these factors you can control, while others you cannot. As with adverse events, incidents, errors and near misses however, there are actions you can take to minimise the damage which we will go over in the next section.