Discussion
The most common conflict resolution style amongst fourth-year medical students was accommodating. The accommodating style focuses on satisfying the other person’s needs or concerns over one’s own. While there is no “correct” primary conflict resolution style, execution of patient care may require an intern to advocate for and/or compromise more rather than simply giving in to the needs of the other healthcare professionals [Diagnosis-based specialties and female students had significantly higher negotiation and emotional quotient scores than procedure-based specialties and male students, respectively. Others have also described differences in communication by specialty and gender that impacted patient outcomes [We were delighted to find no differences in the faculty evaluation of URM and non-URM students especially in light of known racial disparities in student performance evaluations, grades, and membership in the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society [Self-awareness of one’s conflict resolution style(s), as determined by TKI, was not associated with better conflict resolution skills as judged by standardized faculty. Though students reportedly found the TKI useful for their own self-reflection, the lack of impact on skill for this single exercise makes it difficult to justify the cost of administering this instrument ($35/per student).Faculty assigned high levels of entrustment to our students for collaborating in an interprofessional team. The high rates of entrustability despite lack of prior explicit training, specifically in conflict resolution, may be related to a leadership thread in our medical school that includes patient-centeredness and emotional intelligence. Although the number was small, the students who were pre-entrustable may require more sessions with an SP to practice their skills or more feedback to recognize their weaknesses, such as, focusing on respectful assertion.Our study had several limitations. While our sample size was adequate to look at the primary question of entrustability and types of conflict resolution styles, it might not have been adequate to analyze specialty, gender, and URM differences. We did not evaluate whether gender or specialty-concordance between student, SP, and faculty coach played any role in scoring. We had several female SPs for this study; this could have impacted the session and subsequent evaluation of the interaction, and in the future, we plan to include a male SP as well. Further, our faculty coaches are largely physicians (though we have one physical therapist and one nurse practitioner); we could have different members of the healthcare team assessing entrustability.