WGU DFA: Identify Social and Emotional Intelligence Skills Reflection Essay
WGU DFA: Identify Social and Emotional Intelligence Skills Reflection Essay
In this unit, you learned the importance of applying social and emotional intelligence skills to promote collegiality and civility in the workplace. In this activity, you will write a reflective journal entry to identify your own social and emotional intelligence skills as they relate to resolving conflict in the workplace. WGU DFA: Identify Social and Emotional Intelligence Skills Reflection Essay
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Examine the social and emotional skills necessary for building relationships that are founded on caring and trust. Review the power skills for SEL and identify those that will enhance your relationships with colleagues and staff. In your response, discuss three significant attributes or skills and how their embodiment can inspire others. Use current evidence-based resources, included in the module, to support your answer. What SEI skills that have been described in the readings are familiar to you? Which do you possess, or would you like to possess? How can you strengthen your SEI for better self-awareness? Describe how your own SEI can improve your work as a nurse leader, your teamwork in the workplace, and your patient care skills.
WGU SEL Quickguide.
The nurse leader is called upon to be a role model in cultivating positive and collaborative relationships between and among the members of the nursing and healthcare team. These positive elements are key components of civility in the workplace. Civility has been described by Forni (2008) Choosing Civility, as a form of benevolent awareness. In this module you will examine how “benevolent awareness” conveys respect, value, and authentic presence to other people, communicating that people are valued not only for their contributions to the team, but simply for who they are. Mindfulness is using self-awareness, an SEI characteristic, to attend, or to pay attention. Civility is using mindful awareness to attend to, to be fully present, and to engage with others, and is central to creating an environment that breeds kindness, compassion, and empathy not only for your patients, but for yourself and your colleagues. When civility is not present, incivility can result. Incivility is defined as disrespectful and offensive actions towards colleagues, and if left unchecked, can lead to mistrust and distress, and increase the risk for bullying in the professional work environment. Bullying is a major concern and source of workplace conflict in nursing.
In order to delve deeper into the dimensions of using mindfulness strategies in the workplace, you must understand the dimensions of social and emotional intelligence, as all are inextricably linked. Developing an understanding of how social and emotional intelligence skills can impact how you perceive yourself and others, communicate with others, cope with change and challenge, and create a culture of safety and collaboration is vital to nursing practice and leadership. Understanding how building social intelligence skills enables you to accurately perceive the emotions, concerns, and experiences of those around you can facilitate conflict resolution, improve decision-making, and sharpen patient and family assessment skills.
In this module, you will assess your own social and emotional intelligence skills and identify how these can be strengthened in order to enhance teamwork, leadership, and patient care skills. You will also review the process of inspiring others through transformational leadership, coaching, and collaboration.
Respond: A Communication Plan
Instructions:
In this activity you will provide a communication plan in response to a patient and family scenario. How would you communicate caring and respond to the patient, family, and the interdisciplinary team taking care of this patient and family?
Communication Plan Case Study
Mr. Richards is an 89-year-old man who has come into the intensive care unit after suffering an acute stroke with resulting aphasia. His son Jason came to visit him for the first time in five years from Montana and noticed his mumbled, garbled speech, drooping eye, and lip. Mr. Richards is the proud father of five children, all of whom are married, and a grandfather of 10. Some of these grandchildren are old enough to have spouses of their own. Unfortunately, Mr. Richards’s wife died last year, and his care was transferred to his eldest daughter, Melissa, for the past six months.
The relationship between Melissa and her siblings is complicated, and all of them have insisted on obtaining a security code for themselves to access information about Mr. Richards’s condition. Melissa, not wanting to start an argument, has given it to her brothers and sisters, who, in turn, gave it to a few grandchildren. Melissa tells you that her father has not spoken to two of the siblings since the death of his wife due to “issues in settling her will and last wishes.” Melissa reports to the nurses that Jason is feeling guilty that he has not been more involved in the past five years. Jason refused to attend his mother’s funeral last year but produced a list of items he wanted sent to him from her belongings. Melissa also warns you her dad was well respected and attended a local church, whose parishioners have been pressuring her for information. One parish nurse in particular, Patty, has been known to call and visit the hospital during past hospitalizations of Mr. and Mrs. Richards, seeking information about their condition.
Every day on the unit, the nurse assigned to Mr. Richards receives at least eight phone calls about his status from a variety of relatives and friends. Although the nurse tries to be concise, often the conversations with family can take up to 30 minutes, as the nurse has to explain several times and in detail medical issues the patient is having. After a few days of this, the care team brings the family together for a care conference and explains the difficulties in handling so many calls when their father’s care is so critical.
As an end result of the meeting, it was decided that all information will flow through Melissa, and visitation will be restricted to only Melissa, although this does not make everyone happy. The plan is agreed to, however, and now the nurses will field one update call per shift to Melissa and continue to care for and communicate with Mr. Richards.
What is your communication plan for today when you take on the patient and family in this case?
How do you respond and communicate with the following?
- Mr. Richards
- Jason when he calls at 0930
- Melissa when she visits at 1100
- Patty when she visits the unit on “patient rounds”
- Jason’s son Kirk who requests to visit at 1300
- Interdisciplinary team members. WGU DFA: Identify Social and Emotional Intelligence Skills Reflection Essay
Module Overview
Nurse clinicians and leaders are guided by specialty knowledge in their discipline that is evidence-based and critical for the provision of optimal care for patients, families, and populations. Clinical intelligence, however, is not the only type of intelligence needed to provide effective patient care, build strong teams, and create a culture of safety in the workplace. A growing body of evidence over the past several decades has supported that emotional and social intelligence (SEI) relate closely to clinical outcomes for patients and play a central role in building positive relationships between healthcare providers, teams, and organizations. The need for positive, collegial relationships in nursing cannot be underestimated, as they encourage opportunities to improve job satisfaction and to create a less stressful work environment, which ultimately impacts staff turnover and the quality of care provided to patients.
There are five social and emotional intelligence “Power Skills” that nurses should master to become an authentic leader with presence and mindfulness.