Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
com/emotional
-intelligence-why-walking-the-talk-transformsnursing-care/
Emotional intelligence: Why walking the talk
transforms nursing care
looked past the angry behavior and spoke to the guilt was she able to
reach this woman who in reality was in terrible pain.
Identifying emotions correctly is also important for collegial and team
relationships. I recently observed a hostile interaction between a nurse and
a physician. Both parties were competing for who was right about a
patient-care issue. Leaving the interaction, the nurse made several
negative comments blaming the physician for the interaction. Later, I found
the nurse in tears. She said, Im never good enough; he always makes me
feel stupid. As we talked about her relationship with the physician, she
came to realize that feelings of inferiority drove her into repeated conflict
with him. She tried to prove her worth by challenging his care decisions.
Once she correctly identified her emotions, she was able to make better
choices in this problem-prone relationship. As she did this, her relationship
with the physician improved dramatically.
In the ICU one day, I had a series of interactions with my patients family
that left me feeling angry. Other nurses usually describe me as kind and
unusually compassionate with families. But for no apparent reason, every
interaction with my patients son left me feeling increasingly angry. There
came a point when I decided to accept my anger as data, some kind of
important information about the situation. In EI terms, I used my emotions
to inform my reasoning. Only then did I realize that the son had behaviors
that were very manipulative. I was responding with anger to his continuous
subtle manipulation. When I used my emotions in the reasoning process, I
was able to identify the family members behavior and problem solve the
situation more effectively.
I realized that the sons manipulative behavior was the result of the familys
lack of trust in the nursing staff. A short family meeting with the staff
addressed and quickly resolved the trust issues. The manipulative behavior
stopped, my anger never returned, and the patients care improved. I also
came away from this situation having learned something about myself. For
me, anger may be an early indicator that I am in a situation in which I am
being manipulated.
Understanding emotions
The third ability that makes up EI is the ability to understand emotions. This
involves knowing about emotions themselves, the way they evolve,
change, and blend with each other. A good example of this is the grieving
process. Nurses are well versed in the phases of griefshock, anger,
denial, and acceptance. Part of understanding these phases is the
knowledge that they are not linear, but rather may cycle back and forth. A
newly diagnosed cancer patient may have gone through initial shock and
denial and finally have begun to show signs of acceptance, only to cycle
back to anger or denial. An understanding of grieving in all its dimensions is
crucial for effectively working with grieving patients or family members.
An emotionally intelligent hospice nurse I worked with shared an example
of this with me. A deeply caring nurse who typically had close emotional
relationships with her patients, this nurse was having difficulty getting
through to one of her patients who was close to death. She could not
connect with him, nor get close enough to identify what his feelings and
concerns were. In the end, her understanding of the final stage of grieving,
withdrawal, changed her perspective on the situation. She remembered
that as grief is resolved, dying people often begin to withdraw from others.
This introversion isnt a rejection of other people, but rather a continued
positive movement into the experience of death. Her understanding helped
her to respect her patients emotional boundaries and also helped his
family understand what felt to them like rejection. As the nurse understood
her patients emotions, she was able to care for him more effectively.
Understanding emotions is also an important skill for stress management
and burnout prevention. A close coworker was one of the most emotionally
intelligent nurses I knew. She was particularly good with dying patients and
their families, and regularly took on the most challenging assignments. At
one point in her career, over a period of months, she began to complain
that she was feeling more and more detached. She regularly bitterly joked,
They dont pay me to care. She chose to do a school assignment on
burnout and to her alarm found that the detachment, withdrawal, and
cynicism she was experiencing were classic signs of professional burnout.
Equipped with this understanding, she decided to intervene in her own
burnout process. She diagnosed the cause of her burnoutin her case,
high-tech death that violated the honorable dying process she believed in.
She took a leave of absence to work in a hospice for 6 months, where her
faith in the integrity of the dying process was restored. Later she was able
to return to the ICU ready again to do the work she loved. This illustrates
research findings in both nursing and other professions. Measured EI has
been demonstrated to correlate with improved stress response, improved
retention, and decreased burnout.
Managing emotions
Managing emotions in ones self and in emotional situations is the last of
the four EI abilities identified by Mayer and Salovey. Managing emotions is
proactive and problem-focused. It is not the same as denying emotions,
repressing them, or pretending they are not there. As the proverb goes, If
you dont manage your emotions, they manage you. A common example
of this is nurse anger. Nurses often experience anger at patients, their
families, and at other nurses and multidisciplinary team members. Anger
that arises in these relationships is common and understandable, but