In the healthcare sector, professionals are not supposed to act disgusted with their clients. The article, Smith III and Kleinman (1989) note that health professionals have to learn “effective neutrality” in medical schools. Such education help professionals to overcome inappropriate feelings during clinical contacts with patients. Students at medical schools are expected to draw various aspects they learn to manage their emotions. There are various emotional management strategies, including avoiding sensitive contact, transforming the patient into an analytic object, accentuating the emotional feelings by practicing “real medicine,” suppression, and situation modification.
The strategy of avoiding sensitive contact involves handling confidential information on patient care. Patient information can affect the safety of patients leading to emotional feelings that prevent health professional from being objective. For instance, leaked information on the health status of a patient can be used by others to undertake cyber-bullying (Smith III & Kleinman, 1989). The strategy of transforming the patient into an analytic object is crucial as it enables the professionals to deploy their knowledge in a more integrated manner. Health analytics helps doctors and caregivers to understand health data before making diagnosis and treatment. During this time, the professionals are compelled to object, preventing them from getting emotional. The method of accentuating the emotional feelings by practicing “real medicine” provide a barrier to emotional feelings (Smith III & Kleinman, 1989). For example, when encountering the human body, health students can get uncomfortable feelings. Therefore, students should learn from medical school that their profession involves constant pressure and fatigue.
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Suppression is another crucial strategy that helps with self-impression burden. Suppression of emotion consumes cognitive resources enabling the professional to focus more on the object of the emotion. For example, health professional having feelings attached to a patient’s condition can handle such state by having the urge to improve the patient’s condition. Lastly, situation modification is a vital strategy that requires justification for bad behavior and focusing on positive aspects (Smith III & Kleinman, 1989). I know of a friend, who is a nurse and once administered a wrong diagnosis to the patient. Such occurrence ruined her day, and the only way she overcame such feeling is by reappraising the situation. Even ‘good’ doctors have a bad day, and so it should not prevent her from administering services to other patients.
References
Smith III, A. C., & Kleinman, S. (1989). Managing emotions in medical school: Students' contacts with the living and the dead. Social Psychology Quarterly , 56-69.
