Learning to Resolve Conflict: Introduction of a Brief Intervention Into Established Interprofessional Education

Learning to work collaboratively requires opportunities to practice and acquire interprofessional competencies. These can be gained through interprofessional education learning activities (IPE). A key interprofessional competency is learning to constructively resolve difference or conflict, but how to do this is less frequently described than with other competencies. A brief educational intervention about how to resolve difference or conflict was delivered to pre-registration IPE students engaged in small group activities in Aotearoa, New Zealand. A pre/post design study examined qualitative data retained from a student peer assessment tool administered before and after the educational intervention. The intervention was delivered in 2021 and data was compared with an otherwise comparable 2019 student cohort. In 2021, the small groups described fewer instances of poor teamwork in their peer assessments than the 2019 student cohort who did not receive the intervention. 2021 groups who did experience poor teamwork described repair attempts. There are indications that a brief conflict resolution intervention can support most student groups (but not necessarily all) to resolve difference or conflict in small group work.