Achieving consensus: advice for paediatricians and other health professionals: on prevention, recognition and management of conflict in paediatric practice

Conflict can arise between health professionals and the parents of children not only where there is disagreement on the withdrawal or withholding of life sustaining treatment, as seen in recent high-profile cases (1, 2) but also in more general routine care. In this paper we attempt to suggest practices which may reduce disharmony. Although, many of you will already incorporate such practices in your daily working lives, we felt it useful to collate this guidance covering prevention, recognition and management of situations when conflict clearly exists. It will not resolve all conflicts and clearly there will be other practices which are helpful but are not mentioned here, similarly there are further reflections needed on recent cases (3) There is limited research in this field so we have taken evidence from clinicians, parents, parent advocates, ethicists and mediators of conflict in writing this document