Practice 35 Behavioral Nursing interview questions covering de-escalation, crisis response, and therapeutic communication.
Question 14 of 35
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Kelly Burlison is an experienced healthcare and quality measurement professional with experience interviewing in the healthcare field focusing on IT.
Nursing is a career that requires teamwork and cooperation among members of the nursing staff. However, because nursing can be a very stressful occupation and because it requires so much collaboration among team members, conflicts among coworkers often occur. As with many other career settings, if these conflicts are not resolved appropriately, employees cope by using passive-aggressive behaviors. The interviewer is asking this question to understand how you would respond in a situation in which a coworker is demonstrating passive-aggressive behavior. To effectively answer this question, you should indicate that you would calmly and maturely approach the coworker to resolve any underlying conflicts. A more successful answer to this question would include your own experience in resolving a conflict with a colleague.

Kelly Burlison is an experienced healthcare and quality measurement professional with experience interviewing in the healthcare field focusing on IT.
"I have been a nurse for over ten years, and unfortunately, I have dealt with similar situations many times. I find that it is difficult to avoid conflicts when you spend so much time with your colleagues in such a high-stress situation. I would handle this situation similar to the way I responded to the passive-aggressive attitude that I was getting from my co-worker, Vivian, a couple of years ago. Vivian and I had worked together for a couple of years and had a relatively close working relationship. Each morning, she and I would chit-chat about our personal lives before we clocked-in. However, one morning, Vivian's attitude suddenly changed, and she would not engage in conversation. While I didn't think much about it the first day, when she continued to ignore me both in the mornings and while we were on shift, I decided to approach her about it. Instead of being accusatory about her behavior, I approached Vivian and asked her if everything was okay between us. By doing this, I learned that Vivian was upset with me over something that had happened on the floor, and we were able to work it out peacefully."

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Written by Kelly Burlison
35 Questions & Answers • Behavioral Nursing

By Kelly

By Kelly