Unit 23 Employability Skills in HSC Assignment

Program

Diploma in Health and Social Care

Unit Number and Title

Unit 23 Employability Skills in HSC Assignment

QFC Level

Level 5

Table 1

Column A

Key responsibilities at work 1.1

Column B

Performance objectives at work (your own effectiveness) 1.2

Column C

Make recommendations for your own improvement 1.3

Column D

Effective motivational techniques you use at work 1.4

Column E

Communication skills needed at work 2.2

Providing patient care:

Medication and other assistance:

• Providing medication and other services to the patients before and after surgical procedures.
• Instruct them about pre and post-operative care procedures.
• To guide the patients to adopt a healthy life style and educate them according to their requirements. For example; a patient suffering from diabetes need to be acknowledge with the reasons of diabetes, its effect on other body parts and the therapy, life style and diet necessary for the patient.
• To provide safe environment to the patients and others at the NHS centre.

Provide extreme care and proper guidance to the needy:

• It is not easy to give medicines to the patients. Many times they are not willing to take or try to throw out the medicines. My objective is to convince all the patients including children to take medicines regularly and willingly.
• To enhance my skills, experience and efficiency in health care.
• To improve my mistakes by learning through others and ensure not to repeat them in the future.

Need to learn Team working skills: In my 1 year experience of working I have learned that I am weak at team work and could not coordinate many times with the other team members. I would like to improve this and would try to work in a smooth way with the other team members (Gorsky, 2008).

Motivational Counselling :

Counselling should be client centred and focused on the problems of the client. Counsellor must talk in a polite manner and make the patient convince on 

The words of counsellor. Counsellor must believe on the patient and must not be angry or harsh towards client.

Patient must be motivated in a manner that it could resolve the problems of the client.

Fluency in English: Being a native speaker of French language, I felt little difficulty in communicating In English with patients at work place. I required being more fluent in English to make effective conversation with the patients of different places and nationality.

Maintaining the

 records of the patient

• Proper and up to date record of admission and discharge of patient.
• Keeping the personal and private information of patients confidential.
• Keeping the record of age and sex of the patients and treat them accordingly.

Be loyal in services and confident in working:

• Strict compliance to the guidelines, policies and the rules and regulations of the NHS and the hospital management.

Personality Development Programmes: I realized from my work experience that I required to improve my overall personality i.e. communication skills, dressing style, confidence, positive outlook etc. To improve my efficiency. I would join a personality development programme and also work individually to improve myself.

Counselling needs patience: effective counselling needs patience. Counsellor must show sympathy towards the client and illustrate him that his health is the prime importance and must be taken care of it. Questioning should be done in an appropriate manner and make the client believe that his information would be kept confidential and secret in all the conditions (Funnell Koutoukidis & Lawrence, 2009).

I need to improve the communication skills required to talk with the children. It is very obvious that it is quite a tougher job to convince the children to obey you at a clinic or health and social care centre because most of the children are afraid of being at a health centre or hospital. So, it is mandatory to develop the communication skills required to converse effectively with the patients of all age groups.

Providing proper diet to all the patients and keep their data

• Regular and appropriate diet should be provided to all the patients.
• Consider and review the complaints and suggestions regarding the food provided to the patients.

• Be helpful and cooperative to the patients.
• Be regular and punctual in my working.
• My endeavour would be to improve my services.
• I would respond positively to the complaints or feedback about me and would try to improve or correct them in the future. I would behave in a proactive manner instead of reactive in a bad manner.

Need to enhance my knowledge and awareness about the health and care services.

Be a patient listener: Counsellor must listen to all the problems and circumstance of the client attentively and must not do hurry at the time of counselling because counselling could only succeed if the counsellor achieves the trust of the client (Kozier, et al. 2004).

Communication with illiterate or visually impaired: Skills are required to interact effectively with the illiterate or the patients with hearing or visual impairment. This could be attained by learning the sign language and learning the ways to explain and interact with the illiterate patients. For example; For vision testing C chart or picture chart could be used for the illiterate patients.

Professional development and Education responsibility

• To upgrade own skills and learn through training and other education programmes.
• To create an atmosphere of education and development within the staff and follow the guidelines of nursing practice (Webster, 1990).

Give examples: Appropriate examples could help the client in understanding the viewpoints of the counsellor.

Show audio video recordings of previous patients and their counselling and its outcome. For example; a COPD patient who is smoking for last 20 years has completely quit smoking after counselling sessions could help in motivating others with his viewpoints and experience.

Team Communication: Communication with all the team members in an effective manner is also very essential to work properly in health and social care sector. Effective communication among team members helps in maintain good relations among the members and proper discharge of duties like, Proper hand over and takeover of duties, proper exchange of duties, proper work distribution, regular meetings, sharing of experience and thoughts etc.

Table 2

6. Solutions to problems 2.1

7. Evaluate Tools and Methods for developing solution 4.1

8. Strategies for solving problems 4.2

9. Time management Strategies 2.3

1.Team working skills

This could be improved by developing and managing the skills required to work in a team.

Listening: It is very much essential to listen to each other’s viewpoints patiently while working as a team.

Questioning: Ask questions discuss points and make fair arguments to bring out innovative ideas and conclusions through team work.

Persuade and Respect: It is also essential to have skills of persuading others on own plan and words because without the support of team members team work cannot be completed. It is also essential that all the team members respect the feelings and thoughts of each other.

Helping and participation: It is also required for team functioning that all the team members help each other and participate actively in all the activities, meetings or discussions.

2. Personality development: Attributes of attractive personality like self-confidence, impartial behaviour, communication skills, leadership qualities etc. Are required to work effectively in NHS team.

3. Need to enhance my knowledge and skills regarding health and social care service: Further improvement in my knowledge base, understanding and awareness about recent research in the field is required.

4. Computer and technical knowledge

To evaluate my own performance and analyse the experience I would adopt the following tools:

• Self-Assessment: I would assess my own performance in different perspectives and try to inspect my faults and limitations. I would assess my own personality, public speaking skills, communication skills, language, pronunciation etc. To improvise my performance.
• Psychological skill and development test: I would also inspect through online psychological tests and other development tests available to measure one’s own performance.
• Feedback: I would take feedbacks from my professors, seniors and colleagues to evaluate my own performance. I would prepare a feedback form including all relevant points and get it filled by all and then assess it on the basis of score and comments I achieved.
• Combination: I evaluate my activities through combination of all the tools and then categorize it on the basis of the results of the tests undertaken.

The problems which are observed by the others in the feedback and found in the self-assessment would be solved in the first priority.

The problems which are found in the self-assessment and online tests would be solved s second priority.

And the problems which are found in only any one test would be treated in the last.

1. To develop my team working skills I would join long term i.e. of 1 or 2 year or short term course i.e. of 2,3 or 6 months on Advancement in team proficiency.

Training from experienced staff: Could learn from the senior or experienced staff members.

I would also join some online courses to learn these skills.

I would focus on my pronunciation and language problems and try to improvise it by online learning and practising.

2.  Personality could be improved through improvement programmes, short term and long term courses, related audio visuals presentations and recordings, practising the skills etc.

I would participate in group activities and presentation programmes to improve my public speaking skills.

3. Nursing could be explained as that art or understanding which makes nurses to feel the problems of the patient before they utter. Nursing requires heart and emotion with caring nature along with the theoretical knowledge. To train the nurses different training and development programmes are also organized regularly which could help in improving the knowledge about nursing. Long term or short term courses including practical training along with the theoretical classes could help to resolve this problem

4. Computer and the technological knowledge is one of the basic needs of today’s work culture. I faced problems while working on technological tools and equipment and need to upgrade my technological skills and knowledge. For this I would join computer course to learn the basic of computer usage and also join the course to learn the methods and ways of working on the machines and equipment based on the technology (Bradshaw & Lowenstein, 2010)

Effective time management is very necessary in Nursing as nurses generally had a very busy schedule and have to face many types of emergencies so it is very crucial for them to manage their timetable appropriately and strictly. For effective time management I planned to follow these guidelines:

I would keep my all the stationary, records and other required materials properly arranged. In my one year of work experience I observed that many times the things become more time consuming if everything is scattered or unarranged so I decided that I would spend 10 minutes daily to arrange and keep my things properly . This would help me to complete my tasks rapidly.

I have learnt that it is not possible for a person to perform many tasks in the same time and for this I will say no to the things which could not be done and would not compromise with the quality of work.

Nursing is a job in which plan and priority could change suddenly. For example; when I planned to go for a ward round to check all the IPD patients an accidental case emerged suddenly as an emergency and I have to left my plan and attend that patient. To manage this I would try to be timely in my works and would not spend time in unnecessary chats and gossips.

10. Evaluate the impact of implementing Strategies on the business 4.3

1. Implementation of strategies to solve the problems coming in working would help to improve my community and health care services and make me more capable of performing my tasks effectively and in an appropriate manner (Bolton, n.d.).

2. Proper time management strategies would help me to manage the risks and emergencies in an appropriate way and I would become more confident and enthusiastic in handling the situations.

3. Improvement in communication skills and personality would help me to communicate effectively and in a confident manner in the community which would help me to gain the trust and faith of the people which is very essential in health and social services to convince the patients and the family member on the words of the NHS employees.

4. Improvement in computer and technical knowledge would make me more learned and efficient in my working and I could perform my tasks more rapidly than before and need not to be dependent on others for these types of tasks (Hacker, 1998).

Table 3

11. Team roles Your observations 3.1

12. Team dynamics3.2

13. Suggestions 3.3

1. Distribution of Duties among team members

Duties distribution

Team leader

Senior nurses

Junior Nurse

Ward boy and assistant

All the team members have different roles and responsibilities which they need to execute in patient care and services.

Team leader would be the head of department and she would guide all the other nurses and staff members. She would be the person responsible for allocation of work responsibilities and she is also the final authority in making decisions for the department.

Senior nurses would be the expert nurses who would guide junior nurses towards patient care. They are also ensuring that the orders given by the nursing leader is carried out.

Junior nurses would be taking care of the routine activities and documentation part of the patient care. They would also assist in critical care along with senior nurses.

Assistants and ward boys would be more indulged in physical movement of the patient and assisting them in their daily routine activities.

It is an important task to distribute the duties effectively among all the team members according to their area of interest, education and capabilities. According to the Belbin’s team role theory the people are divided into three categories i.e. action oriented thought oriented and people oriented.

It is observed by me that in work environment there was friction between members at some occasions.

Mostly this friction was because of lack of communication and ambiguity in the roles and responsibilities division between members. It is sometimes observed that junior nurses are not sure who was supposed to do a particular work and in the end nobody does the work and it come back as a complaint. Other than this overall work environment and abilities of the team members is excellent and there are no major issues or threatening situations which can impact the services.

These few areas require attention and improvement to enhance the effectiveness of the team.

Coordination between team members is the first problem which has been identified on observing the team working.

There is a clear lack of coordination between junior members of the team whilst senior members appear to be much more articulated.  It can be said that this coordination and team dynamics is observed and identified and gained by the senior members through years of experience and working in close proximity (Barker, 2006).  This capability of senior members is needed to be percolated in the junior members of the team also.

It can be done either through developing an orientation program for the new members and informing them about the need, importance and strategies to achieve coordination. 

Secondly informal gatherings and open meetings can be arranged to discuss all kind of grievances and issues with senior members and to reach an amicable solutions.

1. Second problem is the communication crisis between the members. It is often observed that while changing duties some of the information is missed to be transferred and it later leads to conflict and misinformed plans. This can be avoided by ensuring a strict documentation of information and knowledge developing special approach in the way duties are transferred from one staff member to another.

Weekly meetings are suggested for the entire team which would be informal in nature and it would include some form of entertainment and open dialogue. This will bring members closer to each other and communication process would be smoothened.

Secondly performance appraisal and evaluation of the employees should be linked with their performance in the team and a 360 degree feedback system should be employed where feedback from the juniors and senior members. This will help in developing a pattern of behaviour which is desirable in team environment.