Employability Skills in Health and Social Care Profession

Academic and Employability skills
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Introduction
Health and social care in a sector that is very sensitive. This is so because it involves dealing
with people. It is always required that when dealing with clients and patients then health and/or
social care worker has his/her heart into it. It's a very sensitive career line in society as it involves
dealing with people’s lives.
Before someone is employed the employer must ensure that they have the required set of skills to
qualify in that particular career line.
This write-up is going to discuss some of the employability skills that are related to health and
social care professionals. It is going to be an analysis of some of the skills that someone needs to
have and/or develop in order for them to seek employment as health and social care workers.
Employability skills needed in health and social care profession
Emotional intelligence (EQ)
Emotional intelligence is a very important skill that a health and/or social care worker needs to
have. Emotional intelligence requires that a person possesses high levels of self-awareness,
empathy as well as significant sensitivity to other people. A health or social care worker should
be in a position to understand others. Emotional intelligence is the ability to balance what you
know, the facts about a certain condition say mental illness, its signs, and symptoms and what
one intuits, having an ability to understand what is said by a patient and/or client (Weare, 2010
p.40).

Basically emotional intelligence is more of identifying what you are feeling, knowing how to
interpret and understanding how your emotions are likely to have an impact on other people and
acting accordingly without causing them any damage in the process.
Emotional intelligence is a very important skill that health and social care workers need to
develop for them to be in a position to compete competitively for employment.
Employment in the health and/or social care sector requires that one has a skill of emotional
intelligence.
Active Listening
It is required that health and/or social care worker masters the skill of effective active listening.
Active listening is a skill that entails reflecting back to what the clients say and actively engaging
in the conversation (Kamerāde & Paine, 2014 p.17). Active listening is very crucial because it
enables one to establish trust as well as rest as early as possible in the conversation. In such cases
clients and/or patients often feel comfortable and can express their darkest fears and that they
feel without any trouble.
Active listening is a skill that a health or social care worker needs to master. It involves
developing a pattern of listening to that keeps you fully engaged in a conversation in a positive
way. In addition to this, it entails paraphrasing and reflecting back to what a person says and
thereby withholding any judgments and/or advice until they finish talking.
Active listening is often characterized by aspects such as being neutral and in that case
nonjudgmental, patience, asking questions and seeking for clarifications where possible and
summarizing and reflecting back on what a person says.