Peace and Conflict Studies - Spring 2014

Peace and Conflict Studies Volume 21, Number 1 50 The Patient Safety World Café participants were welcomed into a room with background music, snacks, round tables, and tablecloths. At the tables there were colored markers, different color post-it notes, and flip chart paper for participants to write notes summarizing the main points in the discussion and/or doodle. There were three rounds of conversations driven by questions, previously drafted, and every twenty minutes or so, music alerted the participants that it was time to relocate to another table with a newly formed group and share their ideas. The three questions that served as discussion starters in each successive round were: What is important to our group? What does the group need in order to be energized and feel engaged in these efforts? What conversations could create ripples and create new possibilities for engagement? After finalizing all three rounds, the facilitators led a group discussion to share as a group the patterns and themes that had emerged. Contrary to brainstorming, where the main goal is usually to generate solutions or strategies to solve a problem, through these questions our aim was to foster deep listening, enable a diverse group of people to connect with each other, and tap into their inner wisdom. A graphic artist captured the narratives that emerged in the conversations. Within minutes, strangers were actively engaged in powerful conversations. They were sharing their intimate experiences, frustrations, fears, hopes, values, expectations, and feelings about death, dying, and living. These conversations not only served as a communication tool, they were creating experiences. You could feel the intensity of the synergy in the room. As I will further discuss in this article, the taboo topics of dying, medical errors, and the structural and cultural violence that surrounds dying patients, were unveiled. Contrary to ethics consultation which focuses on the care of an individual patient, these conversations addressed broader systemic challenges. This article is an invitation to conflict practitioners to use dialogue processes, specifically World Café, to unveil unequal power structures during end-of-life care that allow for disparate treatment of minorities and to confront oppressive structures that prevent their end-of-life needs and wishes to be honored. This invitation is consistent with Mayer’s (2004) call to have engagement professionals question normative assumptions of the field in order to deal more effectively with diversity and challenge hierarchical structures that favor the dominant culture. I argue that through dialogue processes, conflict practitioners can pose a challenge to oppressive power structures by educating those with power about the mutual benefit of altering relationships so that they can lead using “power with” and not “power over.” Conflict practitioners need to expand their role in healthcare beyond the scope of