Building Emotional Intelligence Creates Healthy Workplace for Providers

Practitioners frequently wrestle with a range of emotions when working with patients. Developing the ability to identify, use, understand, and manage one’s emotions in a positive, constructive way can be critical to building strong provider-patient relationships and delivering quality care.

At the Cape Cod Symposium on Addictive Disorders on Saturday, Romas Buivydas, PhD, LMHC, CEO of AdCare Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts, presented a session on how emotions can influence caregivers’ lives and ability to navigate their jobs.

“As most of us know, it’s normal for practitioners to experience all types of emotions when interacting with patients,” Dr Buivydas told Addiction Professional in an email interview conducted prior to the Symposium. “Practitioners’ emotions such as happiness and satisfaction are rarely a problem, but emotions such as sadness or anger may interfere with a practitioner’s ability to communicate empathically or even to provide appropriate treatment.”

Dealing with one’s emotions is a learned skill that requires practice, Dr Buivydas said. He offered several strategies that can help:

• Practice the interaction with the patient ahead of time. Imagine the most likely ways that the patient could react and how you would respond.  
• Try to anticipate what may be difficult for you and identify what causes your response. For example, if your emotional response is based on your past, acknowledge this, and put it aside. 
• Clarify your goals. It is unrealistic to expect that you can control patients from experiencing difficult emotions. Acknowledge this and focus on listening, being empathetic, and validating the patient’s emotions.
• Recognize your own behaviors. When your emotions are impacting you, excuse yourself for a moment and do some mindful breathing, then step back in.

Beyond emotional self-awareness, nonverbal communication can play a critical role for providers in their relationships not only with patients, but fellow staff members, Dr Buivydas said. Forms of nonverbal communication include facial expressions, gestures, eye contact, posture, and voice tone.

“Providers should have situational and emotional awareness of their nonverbal communication so they can recognize potentially problematic body language and consciously change it,” Dr Buivydas said. “For example, certain situations might trigger potentially negative nonverbal reactions, such as treating a patient with behavioral issues or dealing with stress.”

There are several ways practitioners can improve their nonverbal communication, Dr Buivydas said:

• When appropriate, smile and maintain appropriate eye contact, but do not stare. Nod your head to demonstrate you are listening.
• Demonstrate interest in what the patient or colleagues is saying. Avoid tapping your fingers, gazing out of the window, looking at the clock, yawning, and other nonverbal actions that might indicate that you’re in a hurry, or worse—bored.
• If seated, lean forward to demonstrate that you’re engaged. Don’t stand looking down on the patient or colleague in an authoritarian manner.
• Maintain a more relaxed posture and avoid gestures that might suggest unwillingness to listen, disapproval, or a judgmental attitude. Encourage the patient to share relevant and complete information.
• Avoid habits associated with electronic health records (EHRs) that create barriers to patient engagement or colleague interaction, such as looking too much at the computer during interactions.

Despite providers’ best efforts, conflicts in professional settings can and will happen, but they don’t have to be ongoing, Dr Buivydas said. It is critical to handle such discord when it arises, he said.

“Getting practitioners to work better together involves giving them tools for identifying and confronting problems, establishing a culture that values both speaking up and listening carefully, and developing awareness around potential for misunderstanding,” Dr Buivydas explained.

There are several potential roadblocks providers can make when trying to establish a healthy workplace, Dr Buivydas said:

• Avoiding conflict. The most common mistake people make when faced with conflict is to avoid it entirely. Dr Buivydas recommends using a benchmark for confronting issues: If you have had 3 or more instances of thinking about something troubling, challenge yourself to address it and take steps for achieving resolution.
• Not asking for what you want. Not being clear about your own desires, and instead waiting for someone else to recognize what you need is another classic mistake that leads to resentment over time. The best way to deal with conflict is to know your own mind and then speak it, he said.
• Not listening. Dismissing issues that someone wants to express is another mistake in handling conflict. Active listening, however, can provide opportunities. Often people just want to feel heard and that doesn’t require agreeing with or acting on what is shared, Dr Buivydas explained.
• Not recognizing differences in communication styles. This mistake requires awareness that people have different communication styles. Tuning into these differences can minimize conflict by removing assumptions about other people’s behaviors.

“For example, colleagues might view someone who prefers blunt speech as rude, while a colleague with a preference for getting to the point might view less direct speech as evasive or manipulative,” Dr Buivydas concluded.

Reference

Buivydas R. Emotional intelligence: how your emotions influence your life at work these days. Presented at the Cape Cod Symposium for Addictive Disorders. Sept. 8-11. Hyannis, Massachusetts.