Emotional Intelligence In Health Care: A Case Study

Health care workers use a range of different skills and techniques when communicating with patients receiving care in a health care setting. When caring for a patient it is important to be empathic, honest, trusting, flexible, use your knowledge, be courageous and professional . Through the use of emotional intelligence a health care worker is able to put these personal attributes to best use. "Emotional intelligence involves being aware of emotion and having the ability to enable emotion to inform reasoned action” (Greenberg 2015 p.13). Emotional intelligence incorporates four main branches; emotional perception and expression, facilitating emotions, emotional understanding and emotional management. These branches are the foundations of emotional
“Interpersonal communication is the process by which people exchange information, feelings, and meaning through verbal and non-verbal messages: it is face-to-face communication” (Skills you need, 2015). These skills can assist in caring for the patient, ensuring optimum intervention and include counselling skills, assertiveness skills, social skills and facilitation skills. Counselling skills can help an individual in a temporary emotional crisis or “in caring for the personal who has longer-term problems of living” (Morrison, P, & Burnard, P 1997, p.108). This skill involves “listening and talking to the distressed or depressed person” Morrison, P, & Burnard, P, 1997 p.107). Assertiveness skills involves the use of bureaucracy when dealing with ‘difficult’ patients. The term social skills regards to general public interactions as well as introduction and visitations with patients. Facilitating skills refers to “managing groups for educational purposes” (Morrison, P, & Burnard, P 1997, p.108). In the case of Mrs Green the interpersonal communication skill of ‘counselling’ would play a vital role in understanding her fears and reasoning. By listening and using active listening skills a health care worker, in this case a nurse would be able to find a solution to the ‘emotional crisis’. Interpersonal communication skills are used daily by all health care
It assists in the caring for the patient through the understanding and interpretation of emotions correctly and more easily. Through the use of the four emotional intelligence branches; emotional perception and expression, facilitating emotions, emotional understanding and emotional management; one is able to recognise what they need to be looking for and where they need to be looking to reach a higher level of emotional intelligence. This ‘higher level’ can contribute to an individuals reaction time to emotions and therefore stop them from escalating, helping to develop trust between yourself, colleagues, patients and carer, and assist in protecting yourself and others from emotional harm. (The EI Institute, 2016). It is seen that by using interpersonal communication skills like counselling, assertiveness, empathy, social skills and facilitating these skills a health care worker is more easily able to find a solution for emotional breakdowns and identify emotions before they are verbally communicated. All in all, emotional intelligence is highly important in any workplace, especially in health care facilities as it assist in caring for patients and meeting their needs in a professional