Conflict and Compromise: Catholic and Public hospital partnerships

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1. What were the major points that made PN the effective method of choice (relative to other options) for your chosen case study?
In the above case principled negotiation was the most effective method that could be used to bring a compromise in the situation. This is because the situation involves the hard stance of the Catholic Church. Catholic Church is known to take hard stances on matters regarding reproductive issues. Abortion, use of contraceptives, and sterilization have been viewed and categorized by the Church as morally wrong and thus the Church has the responsibility of teaching and instilling morals to the community. Therefore, the Church could not agree that Seton, which is an establishment under the Catholic Church top, continue engaging in these services. Principled negotiation is used in situations where both parties need to make sacrifices and compromises in order to achieve desired outcomes (Wall, 2010).
As Faure (2003) explains in his book, principled or collaborative negotiation is largely successive in situations where people need to be separated from the problem. The daughters of charity, who are the founders of the Seton hospital, believe that their call is to serve the poor and the oppressed. The daughters of charity believed that closing down Bracken Ridge Hospital would present more evil as the poor and the oppressed would not be reached. In addition, Seton knew that in order to survive in the hospital industry, the partnership between the two hospitals was vital. This is because the Columbia HCA group would soon take over and become the major player in the hospital industry. The concern of the daughters of charity was the fact that the poor and oppressed would not afford health services as the group was profit making (Wall, 2010).
One of the principles of collaborative negotiation is the ability to focus on the interests of the conflicting parties, so as to establish the reasons behind the conflict. Both the Catholic Church and the Seton Hospital serve the same purpose of making people’s life easier and better. Signing the agreement between the two hospitals served to create a division between the daughters of charity, Seton leadership, and Bishop Mc Cathy on one hand, and Vatican on another (Wall, 2010). This situation clearly showed a misunderstanding between these two groups, all of whom main agenda is one: that of enabling people live better lives. This misunderstanding was brought about by the fact that Seton had to adhere to catholic directive on health care services, which banned the direct involvement in reproductive services. On the other hand, the Bracken Ridge Hospital maintained that in order to continue serving the community, which included an increasing number of secularists for the reproductive services to continue.
In this situation, both parties needed to come up with different options that would enable Seton Hospital to continue operating without the Catholic Church feeling that Seton is promoting activities contrary to the view of the church. The situation, which was already worsened by the fact that other Catholic institutions had followed suit and established mergers and business relations with non-Catholic institutions and thereby the solution to this case, which serve to give a guide on how the Catholic Church wanted to be viewed in respect to offering productive health services (Faure, 2003). In addition, the articles hitting the newspaper gave a bad reputation to the church and served to demoralize Bishop McCarthy and others since it had portrayed them as misrepresenting the situation on the ground to the Vatican. Similarly, if Vatican determined that Seton did not conform to its moral teaching, it would withdraw its sponsorship to them, forcing the hospital to close down, a situation, which would see its founders unable to meet their mission of assisting the poor and the oppressed (King, 2006).
The source of conflict by these parties was the carrying out of banned reproductive health procedures in Catholic facilities. Through the use of principled negotiation the two parties were able to reach a compromise where productive health services would continue to be offered but not by the employees of Seton, but by city employees. This would see the Catholic Church continue the sponsorship program to Seton hospital while the daughters of charity were left to continue with their mission to the people (Wall, 2010).
2. Can this approach be emulated in and to other environments? Present an example.
Principled negation, also commonly referred to as negotiations on merit, is not focused on winning or losing but rather on the merit of the processes of negotiation, which enables everyone to walk away as a winner. This is because people feel they have been given a voice in the process of problem solving. Principled negation more often seeks a compromise, which works towards establishing partial satisfaction to all the parties (King, 2006). Although collaborative negotiations have been popularly used in the medical fields, other environments can successfully enumerate it. The major advantages of using principled negotiation include the ability to strengthen partnerships through addressing the conflicts. When the parties perceive that through the negotiation they emerge all winners, there is a higher possibility of strengthening their relationships and avoiding future conflicts. The core concerns that have been identified as people’s motivators include: status, appreciation, autonomy, and role.
Originally, perceived negotiation was used in psychology and in the medical fields, but from its advantages it has been successfully used in different environments. One of the many environments that it is used today is in the business world, especially on conflicts between business deals. When carrying out different business deals there are numerous conflicts between the suppliers and purchasers, which usually originate from misunderstanding of the contracts that both parties sign (Faure, 2003).
Collaborative negotiations have successfully been used to resolve these kinds of conflicts by establishing a compromise, which aims to leave both parties satisfied and to avoid any chance that a party will benefit from the mistake of others. Similarly, perceived negotiations have been widely used to offer long lasting solutions in political scenarios. In political situations, the conflicting parties take up hard stances that require the intervention of a mediator to assist in seeking for a compromise between the conflicting parties. For instance, post election violence emanating from botched elections has been solved through collaborative negotiation where leaders agree to form grand coalition governments. According to Faure, (2003), although this process is involving and long, it has successfully been used to achieve peace where all the parties win. However, the solutions presented by collaborative negotiation are not optimal but have been regarded as very practical in most cases.

References
Wall, B. M. (2010). Conflict and Compromise: Catholic and Public Hospital Partnerships. Nursing History Review. 18: p 100-117
King, T. (2006). Working with families in palliative care: one size does not fit all. Journal of Pall Medicine. 9 (3): p.704-715.
Faure, G. O. (2003). How people negotiate: Resolving disputes in different cultures. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.