Essay On Personal And Professional Development In Health And Social Care.

Personal and Professional Development in Health and Social Care

To encourage you to develop as a reflective practitioner by linking your own personal values, skills and cultural awareness to your work in health and social care and to your ambitions for a future career in health and social care management.

In order to complete and achieve this assignment, you will need to address both parts (A) and (B): 

1. Firstly, make a list of your own values and principles and then, make a list of the principles of Health and Social Care. Secondly, write a statement that compares your values and principles with the principles of Health and Social care (you must use specific ‘real life’ examples to illustrate/show these connections).
2. Firstly, Using a mix of both words and pictures (illustrative photographs from online may be used if you do not wish to use your own pictures), discuss some of the important aspects of your own cultural background and your life experiences. Secondly, discuss how these things (cultural background and experiences) influence how you offer support to Service Users, their families and your work colleagues.
3. Firstly, Using separate ‘Mind Maps’, show how new developments in health and social care, influence the way you work. Secondly - using specific work place examples – show how changes to your personal values have influenced your work in HSC.

1. Firstly, Conduct a SWOT analysisbased on the skills needed for a career in health and social care. Secondly, having completed the Honey and Mumford Learning Style questionnaire, use specific examples from your workplace to illustrate how you behave in a way that demonstrates your dominant (stronger) Learning Style(s).

1. Produce a Development Plan covering both personaland professional objectives for:
2. Short Term- (until the end of this term)
3. Mid Term – (one year from now)

• Long Term (three to five years from now)

1. During the term you must record the progress you are making with your objectives and update your plan with these ‘progress notes’ as well as recording any other changes to your Plan.

Finally, evaluate how effective this plan will be in helping you to advance your career. (*You will need to consider the positives/negatives, as well as areas for improvement.) 

1. Identify two different professional relationships that are connected to your workplace and describe their characteristics. 
2. For each of the two relationships discussed in a) (you may use two other relationships if you wish) list two issues you have encountered with them. Using specific examples from either our in class role-play, or from your workplace, explain how you resolved the issues you describe.
3. Firstly, make a list of Service Users’ rights. Secondly, make an evaluation of your effectiveness in promoting and supporting some of those rights and discuss how you could improve your effectiveness.

1. Using specific work based examples, make an evaluation of your contribution in the following situations:
2. As part of a team
3. As an individual with one or more Service Users
4. Firstly, describe your work role. Secondly, using examples from your work place, describe a situation in which you are limited by what you can do, due to your job role. Thirdly, discuss what impact these limitations have on those you are working with (these might be colleagues, other HSC professionals or Service Users and their families).
5. Firstly, consider a work based team you have been a member of. Using Tuckman’s theory of ‘Team Development’, identify the stages that your team went through and describe what stopped or prevented the team from moving through Tuckman’s Stages of group development more easily. Secondly, discuss what action you would take to as manager or team leader, to make your team progress through Tuckman’s stages as smoothly as possible.

6. Now think about your own personal contribution to a workplace team (you may use the same team as in section (c) or you may choose a different one). Describe what that team does and then make at least three suggestions for how you could increase the effectiveness of that team by improving your own personal contribution. (* You will need to explain why your contribution will improve the performance of the team).

This is the work experience requirement for the whole of your qualification, and consists of a log of hours and tasks, which must be validated and authenticated by an appropriately qualified expert witness such as your workplace supervisor.  Using log sheets supplied to you, you should log each shift or other period worked, giving details of the tasks / approaches / knowledge used.  At the end of the shift, you must get the signature of your supervisor, who will also sign off on any specific activities he or she has witnessed.

If you are involved in work experience for more than one employer during the course of the HND, you must log each employer’s work separately, clearly indicating which logs are associated with each employer.

The front sheet for your log-book should indicate:

• The name and contact details of the employer
• A brief description of the setting and type of work involved
• A brief description of your role
• The name and contact details of your workplace supervisor

Part A: Task 1

In health and social care sector, the staffs are dedicated to serve the public, who need it. For doing this the health and social care staffs need to develop some specific skills and abilities, through continuous personal and professional development. Personal effectiveness is an integral part of social are, where besides the health care services, the caregivers plays an important role in improving the outcomes of service users (Hopkinson 2014). Therefore, the HSC staffs should go a step further from the routine tasks of medical care for ensuring a high quality care and assistance to the service users.

This assignment aims to encourage health and social care staffs to apply their understanding and skills as the reflective practitioners in their own health and social care settings. In this context, the HSC learners would be able to understand the influence and contribution of personal values and principles for working in the health and social care settings (Moon 2013). In addition, the assignment would also provide information for being able of producing, monitoring, revising and evaluating the plans for continuous personal and professional skills and abilities development, which are required by a health and social care practitioners. In addition, this assignment also focuses on understanding the application of professional engagement with users of health and social care services. The HSC staff would also gain benefit from demonstrating the development of own skills and understanding in relation to work with other in the HSC practices. In addition, the personal experiences will also be aligned with the principles and services in the health and social care sector.

1. a) Values and principles in health and social care

I am working as a phlebotomist in Private GP HealthCare Clinic. I have aligned my personal values with the professional aspects in my workplace. Personal values of an employee include the skills, abilities, beliefs, cultural aspects and traits, contributing to the personality of the employee. Aligning the personal and professional values one can effectively achieve the professional goals and job satisfaction (Nicholls 2014). From my perspective, I have some personal values that include dignity, creativity, courage, independence, attitude of care friendliness, co-competiveness, gentle, well-behaved and honest. In addition, I always show respect towards the cultural and linguistic diversity and attempts to assist people to accustom in a diverse background. My social values and preferences include equality, freedom and justice to human rights. In professional field, I prefer teamwork, following policies and procedures of HSC, ethical framework, trustworthiness as well as autonomy in work.

The key principles of health and social care include teamwork, diversity in culture, promoting human rights, ethics, professionalism, equity and duty of care (Zepeda 2012). I always attempt to integrate my creativity in service, for satisfying care users and to overcome barriers of attaining healthcare objectives. I always attempts translate for people with diverse linguistic background and help them to be accustomed in the HSC framework, which also do for individuals in my community, other than my workplace. I always listen to patient’s perspectives on their care plan for integrating them into the service, thereby promoting their independence and human rights. I attempt to communicate in a transparent way with the members in multidisciplinary tea to promote teamwork in workplace.

1. b) Cultural influence over health and social care services

Mind Maps

The people I cared for were from a small country that situated in the horn of Africa, Somalia East. The country has a rich culture, language and a wide range of traditional cuisine. Mainly I provided regular care to elderly and frail people. I help them to remember some aspects of their cultural identity by showing pictures, for instance, images related to their regular rituals and religious landmarks, such as Makkah, mosques etc. In case of my relatives like my uncle, I had regular discussion about these religious aspects through pictures

To help them in improving their cultural identity, we need to provide a range of different images about the Somali culture. In the figure 2, the cultural clothing, traditional dance, language and other important cultural aspects has been shown. The Somali language is known as Dhaanto and people from all age enjoys their cultural dance performance regardless of their gender. There are 18 regions of the country, having different traditional dancing patterns, however, I belongs to the region having the best traditional dancing culture.

My uncle likes to watch these traditional dancing, I provide him the independence to give his opinion on these pictures and try to bring pictures according to his preference on the next day. In our culture people enjoys having traditional dishes

My personal experience helped me to prioritize cultural aspects of people under my care services. At my workplace, I always show dignity and respect towards people from diverse cultural background and attempt to make the environment familiar to their culture. For this a strong therapeutic alliance is made, which helped me to understand their cultural priorities, food habit and preferences, based on which I attempted to modify the environment, promoting their wellbeing (Hunzicker 2011).

1. c) Influence of changes in personal values on HSC work

In the above mind map, how the new developments in health and social care have influenced the HSC work has been shown. The key developmental trend is the integration of new technologies in the workplace. The new technologies has made the communication and documentation more authentic and easy, it helped the health and social care workers to improve the quality of work by reducing the rate of errors and misinterpretations (Knott and Scragg 2016). The new developments in integrating evidence-based care helped the health and social care staffs to improve implement the most appropriate intervention based on the care priorities. However, I used to prioritize more the traditional aspects in both and personal life like direct meetings, manual documentation; however, after implementing new advanced communication and documentation tools, I have changed my professional priorities accordingly, which reduced the error rate in practice, thereby improving the quality of care services provided to users.

1. a) The health and social care staffs need to have some specific skills and abilities for fostering health and well being of public. To analyze these skills and abilities required by a health and social care staff SWOT analysis can be done.

Strength- The strengths possessed by a health and social care staff include high efficiency in care providing, collaborative skills, empathy and dignity towards colleagues and patients. In addition, negotiation skills and good communication skills are other strengths (Pedler 2011).

Weakness- The weaknesses of a health and social car staff include temperament in nature and behaviour to patients which should be regulated and applied with soft gesture thereby moralizing patients highly in their health recovery process.

Part B

Opportunity- The opportunities for HSC staff include cooperation with team and colleagues for providing better care to the service users (Reeves et al. 2011).

Threat- Threats of HSC staffs include inadequate leadership practices, non-compliance of patients and colleagues and inadequate organizational culture.

According to the Honey Mumford learning style, I follow the learning style of ‘reflector’ (Moule and Hek 2011). I prefer in evidence-based work, where I learn from observing things. In my job role, I prefer to stay back and collect data from the practical field, i.e. assisting my colleagues. By assisting them, I gather knowledge and experience, from where I get experience related to the work apply those in clinical practice.

1. b)Development plan

1. c) While working on the development plan, I have not made any changes in the plan.
2. d) The development plan is effective enough to improve my career outcomes. In the development plan, I have included both personal and professional objectives for advanced career. The short term goal will help me to gain more opportunities in my career, whether the midterm objectives would help me to complete my current career goals and the long term goal will shape my future activities towards my ultimate career goal (Lowes and Hulatt 2013). Therefore, it can be interpreted that the development plan is effective for my improved future. However, changes in my personal life can have significant impact upon the achievement of my career objectives.

1. a) In my professional practice, I play the role of a phlebotomist in Private GP HealthCare Clinic, where my duty is to take blood from patients mainly. In addition, I also assist doctors and patients for any kinds of information they need as well as help my colleagues in lab or pharmacy in their work (Cameron et al. 2014). In my workplace, two other professionals connected with my job role are gynaecologist and pharmacist.

According to the Honey and Mumford learning style model, the gynaecologist doctor follows the ‘activist’ learning style. More than one time, he has been seen to take risk to deal a critical patient with a new medication, without observing the clinical adverse effects, however, his activities supported his perception  all the time and in every cases, he succeeded efficiently. He always consist a problem solving approach, brain storming, role play and competitiveness are his key traits.  On the other hand, the second professional is the pharmacist, who follows the ‘pragmatist’ learning style (Mitchell et al. 2012). The characteristic traits of the pharmacist include problem solving approach, discussion and case study. He always attempt to think twice prior applying his learning in the reality. It has always been reviewed that the pharmacist check the requirements and guidelines more than one time and discuss with the team members thoroughly prior progressing with a questionnaire, prior undergoing a clinical testing or prescribing a medication to a particular service user. However, none of them follow ‘reflector’ learning style.

1. b) I work with both of the above mentioned health care professional as a health and social care team. However, several times I have experienced workplace conflicts with both of them. Within the organizational context, with the pharmacist I had experienced a conflict, while assisting him in a lab work. The pharmacist was working with a blood sample and I witnessed that he used the same syringe, while using two different blood samples in the testing. I argued with him, however, he denied with the work first. He was worried that he had to repeat the entire testing procedure again, however, the action would provide a false test result. It was the first conflict with the pharmacist. I resolved the issue through an in-depth discussion with him and reminding him the ethical guidelines and making him aware about the adverse effects of his activity.  Another issue with the pharmacist was regarding a miscommunication. I used to assist my colleagues at the workplace in their works. I was supposed to assist in one of his task after my shift time, however, due to some emergency at my home, I had to leave the workplace sooner, instead of assisting him, however, due to the emergency, I was not able inform him, but I informed another staff to convey the message, but he did not do the same. This miscommunication created a significant miscommunication. I resolved the issue by directly communicating with him and seeking apology for the incident. He understood the emergency situation and supported me.

On the other hand, with the gynaecologist, I also experienced some conflicts; he can take a risk without having a prior knowledge, but from my perspective, this should not be the case, because taking risk with the patients can have serious adverse effects, which may also lead to fatal consequences, which is also not ethically approved. Several times I had undergone argument with the gynaecologist. In this context, I used the ethical guidelines and an thorough discussion for reviewing evidences available regarding the intervention that the physician is going to recommend the patient. In addition, he also did not collect informed consent from the patient or the family. By discussing with him regarding the frequencies of cases related to adverse effects of intervention and related consequences. In this context, I had assisted him to have a discussion with his team, the other team members advised him to make take informed consent prior the intervention plan. Another conflict was related to withdrawing blood; he pushed an injection to one of his patient and left the syringe open on the bed side table of the patient. I have identified that and attempted to warn him about the adverse effects of event. I revealed the conflict by discussing with him about the proper way of disposal of the syringe after using it.

1. c) In health and social care, service users have some rights, which should be promoted by the staffs. These are:

1) Privacy- I ensure that all the personal information are kept confidential for each clients I deal with. I respect each service user’s privacy during their ADLs and private moments.

2) Dignity- I try provide assistance to my clients whenever they needed, while dealing with elderly people, I always respect their preferences and ideas regarding their care plans. I try to minimize their feelings of inferiority, inadequacy and vulnerability (Valentine et al. 2015).

3) Independence- I always try to encourage them to do their ADLs by their own, involve their family and the patient himself. I try to foster services by focusing on capacities rather than on disabilities.

4) Security- Working with other, I always try to promote an environment, which is free of hazards. For every service users, the HSC team arranges a risk assessment to ensure their security (Fleming et al. 2011).

5) Civil rights- The environment provides the access for the service users and their relatives or friend to give a feedback on the services. The service users are encouraged to participate in community and social activities.

6) Choice- The schedule of the services is managed according to service user’s preferences. I respect service user’s eccentricities, personal preferences and idiosyncrasies (Shukr et al.  2013).

However, I should promote the organization to improve the diversity of patient care to improve the fulfilment of care objectives in efficient way.

1. a) In my workplace, I work together with other members of the health and social care team. I the care team, I always try to maintain a transparent communication with the team members and always take an initiative to convey other’s ideas in through the team members. In addition, I also take an initiative to assist others individually, as I have revealed previously that instead of my job role, my duty is to assist my colleagues in their work (Pritchard 2013). I attempted to take initiatives in workplace innovation and integration of new technologies related to documentation and communication tools. With the help of my critical thinking and problem solving skills, I used to resolve conflicts between my colleagues.
2. b) I am a phebotomist and health care assistant. My duties are taking blood from patients working with the doctors as well as assisting the patients any kind of information they need helping my colleague in the lab or in the pharmacy. As I have discussed in the previous sections, regarding my assistance towards the pharmacist and the gynaecologist doctor. In this context, I have assisted more than one of my colleagues in their job role as well as has taken initiatives for improving the overall service quality provided to the service user from our health and social care organization. However, there several limitations of job role, which sometimes hinder my effective role in workplace crisis. Due to my job role, I am unable to decide medication or care plan for a service user, instead of understanding the condition. On the other hand, I am unable to interpret a patient’s report and recommend plans, instead of having knowledge and skills. In addition, I am unable to claim the right therapy for a patient arguing with the senior physicians, as I do not have a physician’s degree. Sometimes, due to these boundaries I feel helpless, if I attempt to suggest right things to my seniors, conflicts arise, which negatively affects the quality of services provided to the user.
3. c) I am the member of the multidisciplinary team at the private GP health care clinic, where I assist others including physicians, patients and other colleagues working in lab or pharmacy. According to the Tuckman’s theory of team development, the multidisciplinary team was at the ‘storming’ stage, which is characterized as the 2^ndstage of the team development stages. At this stage the conflict and competition are greatest, as the group members start to understand tasks and starts to address some of more important issues like leadership, rules, regulations, authority and team structure. In our multidisciplinary team, the key conflict was related to the team authority or leadership within the nurse manager and GP. At this stage key conflict was that who should lead the team, as both of them are capable of leading the team. As a result, the progress of our team was hindered. I took an initiative in mitigating this issue. As a team member I had the right to give ideas for improving the team’s conflict situation. I suggested to take feedback from each team member and analyze the feedback by HSC staff, who is not involved in the team, to reduce biasness in the decision. Based on the team member’s preferences, the GP has been made the team leader. As a team leader, I would do the same, would collect the feedback from each team members, prior taking an action, to make a transparent communication and prioritize their values as key part of team.
4. d) In this multidisciplinary team, I have contributed enough to improve the effectiveness of services. I have always supported collaborative work culture, which motivated many of my team members, who initially followed individual work, instead of group work. There was a significant interpersonal conflict, some of my team members were not complying with the team rules and professional codes. As a responsible team member, I have always assisted and discussed with my colleagues about their accountabilities and attempted to make them understand about their priorities and make them realize that every little contribution from each of the team members can increase or decrease the service quality provided by the team (Reeves et al. 2011).

The team includes different health care provides, all of which are dedicated to provide a quality health and social care service to the users. Being responsible team members, I should improve in the following areas, which would improve the team performance.

• Undergo further additional courses for enhancing my knowledge and working domain
• Improve my communication skills
• Improving my skills to help others in meeting their professional objectives

All of the above three aspects would help the team to achieve the team objectives and would assist us to ensure the efficient health outcomes of the service users.

Conclusion

In this assignment, the key focus was understanding the role of personal and professional development in health and social sector. In this assignment, the responsibilities of a health and social care worker has been demonstrated both as an individual staff as well as while working in a health and social care team as a team member or team leader. In addition, a personal development plan has also been included in this assignment. The cultural and personal background has also been considered in the evaluation of personal and professional development. The contribution of personal and professional development to the team as well as the organization has also been discussed.

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