The Significance of Self-Awareness in Healthcare Professionals

This paper discusses the importance of self-awareness in healthcare professionals for effective communication with patients. It highlights the significance of personal reflection, psychodrama, and therapeutic communication in improving self-awareness. The involvement of patients in decision-making process and the use of Johari model framework as a self-awareness tool for communication has also been discussed.

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Table of Contents
Introduction:..................................................................................................................................2
Significance of self-awareness:.....................................................................................................3
Conclusion:.....................................................................................................................................6
References:.....................................................................................................................................7

Introduction:
Self-awareness is having a clear understanding or perception about self-personality which
include strength, weakness, beliefs, thoughts, motivation and emotions. It allows us to know or
understand other people, how they perceive us and our attitude and responses towards them at
that moment. It involves one being mindful of his/ her thoughts and feelings, strength and
vulnerabilities, coping mechanisms and most signifying the value that motivate one’s goals and
actions.
It is an important factor through which success can be accomplished in almost every professional
sector. In medical field, health care worker uses this to maintain relationship with patients. It is
also found that, people facing tough times, while using this process as it is time taking and can be
very troublesome sometimes (Edwards, n.d.). It begins with moral awareness and then it further
leads to struggle for changing by making efforts continuously. The nurses spent most of their
time with the patient, therefore it is vital for them to form therapeutic relationship with their
clients. Self-awareness could be really helpful as a tool to help to form a good therapeutic
relationship. Although the professional healthcare training school assist the health worker to
develop into person who knows how to function in critical or normal situation. Thus, it is very
significant for the health care workers education. The vital aspects of self-awareness are analysis
of its analysis factor, its implications in healthcare professionals, its development in healthcare
workers and lastly how to use it in establishing relationship with the patient.
The improvement of self-awareness in both personal as well as professional aspects often leads
to success, development at professional level and increase quality therapy and care of patient. As
it is the duty and ethical responsibility of health care workers to look after their patients and
provide good care to their patients, for which it is important to understand self (Symons, et al.,
2009). There should be rationale reflection and approach for the workers, to ensure proper
communication between health care providers and patients. The communication process between
healthcare workers and clients can be verbal or nonverbal. From the reflection of one’s act
through writing journals, speaking to friends, meditations are some of the ways of practicing
self-awareness. The healthcare worker while visiting their friends and listening to them and their
experiences, will make them have information on their personal lives and how they deal with
their issues and thus it will help them to understand and in taking care of their clients. A diary on
reflection of their own by using reflection models and learning about the body language are some
other important aspects that can improve self-awareness of health professionals and thus leads to
effective and efficient communication with their patient (Ahrweiler, et al., 2014). It is apparent
that self-awareness is not a quick or rapid process rather it continuous for longtime which is the
reason the healthcare professionals should perform it on regular basis.
The above discussion made it apparent that there are numerous ways through which self-
awareness of healthcare worker can be improved and helps in communicating with their patients.
One of the common method used in the health care is the personal reflection. It is very vital for
the health worker to reflect on their experiences and learn from the mistakes they have made in
past.(Ozcan, 2011). Personal reflection is helpful as the healthcare professional can relate with

their patient or even share the experience with them. This will certainly improve the relationship
between patient and healthcare professional and eventually improving the communication
process between the healthcare.
People get opportunity to grow on earlier practices through personal reflection and can also lead
to behavioral changes (Haley, et al., 2017 ). Psychodrama is one of the technique which the
healthcare professionals can use to enhance their self-awareness and can also implement it while
communicating with their clients. This session can also help in identifying the flaws in the
therapeutic relationships and also through this process the health care professionals can include
their role models and skills they gained in communication, thus establishing health professionals
and patient relationship. As per the previous studies, it was found that the psychodrama tool was
very helpful in aiding to gain self-understanding.
It also assisted them with opportunities to understand others and helped them to make connection
between the patients and their feelings. Thus, it can be said that, psychodramas are effective and
efficient method in removing the flaws of communication between the health professional and
their patients.
Significance of self-awareness:
Self-awareness has always been an essential aspect of health care professionals practice in
healthcare settings. It also helps in improving competency and ultimately leading to greater
satisfaction for the patients. It is a transformative and dynamic process that ca lead to change for
the lives of healthcare workers and patients (Adams, 2010). It guides healthcare professionals to
cultivate good behavior which enables the healthcare professionals to create an appropriate
environment in healthcare setting which further helps in promoting communication between
patients and healthcare providers, creating a good interpersonal relationship. It also delivers a
therapeutic environment to ensure that healthcare professions take good care of themselves. The
self-awareness helps the healthcare workers in cultivating good and healthy behavior leading
tobetter healthcare worker which further leads to better patient care. It is often seen that, not all
people are same in practicing self-awareness. But some people takes less time in evaluating and
understanding their feelings and emotions while other takes more time to perform self-awareness
(Beaulieu, et al., 2011). In self-awareness, listening to your inner voice is very important and
healthcare providers uses this to ensure that their patients listen to their inner dialogue. If any bad
behavior is identified, the workers advise the patient in changing that behavior to healthy ones.
Many studies and research show that, the healthcare workers not only provide care to the patient
but also helps to resolve their personal stress and problems. In the absence of self-awareness,
there will be a poor patient and healthcare worker relationship and this affects the overall
communication.

The healthcare workers take lesson from their own to improve the lives of the patient by teaching
them to use self-awareness to get themselves out through those situations. It is evident that the
healthcare providers require verbal as well as nonverbal communication to help them while
communicating with their clients or patient. They need to learn to handle various situations
instead of avoiding them (Brady & Quirke, 2017). As healthcare worker has to deal with patient
from different cultural background, they have to apply self-awareness after assessing the
situation properly and apply self-awareness at different levels. Hence, the healthcare providers
should be able to implement self-awareness effectively and efficiently so that their patients open
ups and ensures that they are satisfied with their service.
There is another communication style i.e., therapeutic communication which is an essential skill
that every healthcare worker should possess. The significance of therapeutic communication
should not be underestimated in health care practice. The proper therapeutic communication
takes place only after self-awareness comes into play, thereby by boosting the relationship
between the healthcare worker and the patient (Ünal, 2012). It is an important skill which
ensures the healthcare workers to provide holistic care to their patient. Although this
communication process takes place only when the healthcare workers uses self-awareness which
delivers a proper environment for healing and caring purpose. As communication is an essential
skill and is not efficient in most of the health care providers but after introducing self-awareness
while caring for their clients or patients has improved the overall healthcare delivery system.
The heath care worker self-awareness can help in direct communication according to the need of
their patient and thus helps in creating proper healthcare setting for the treatment of the patient. It
is very important for the healthcare worker to understand their behavior and values as they
interact with patient of different cultural backgrounds. The should be able to understand about
these values and belief affects patients. The person won’t be able to receive quality care and
treatment as the healthcare workers are not aware of their culture and values (Stonehouse, 2010).
The healthcare worker should not argue with their patient who does not shares same values or
beliefs and also those with the inappropriate behaviors (Zhi, 2017). The self-awareness of both
client and healthcare providers will stop from doing such act. The effective use of self-control
helps the health care worker to know about their strength, knowledge, limitations and personal
response patterns. Thus, having these knowledges ensure proper relationships between the
patient and worker and eventually leading to appropriate and effective care to their patients.
The inclusion of patients in decision making process is also one of the way that the workers use
self-awareness although the participation of the patient in decision making process is a
complicated matter, it has become popular as it helps in modeling of the healthcare system to
ensure the safety of the world. this has been successful to some extent by the application of self-
awareness. The healthcare providers should agree to the patients in decision making process,
although the patient is not knowledgeable person of that articular field, they still have to agree to
their decision which should be in consideration to their health (Klein, 2016).
The involvement of patient in decision-making process can be influenced by various factors like
lack of medical information, morbidity, low confidence, accepting a new role and various other
social factors. All the factors mentioned above can be influenced by self-awareness and the

healthcare worker have to make sure to use them to influence the patient in making correct
choice when it is required. The acceptance of the fact among healthcare providers implies that
patient have significant role in decision making and can be affected by type of sickness, personal
beliefs, social status, desire to stay in control, ethnicity and relationship between patient and
health worker (Han & Kim, 2016). The health care worker has to perform self-assessment on
themselves to ensure these factors are not affecting the decision-making process and thus
maintaining proper environment and a good healthy relationship. As per the studies, it has been
found that, patient can change the behavior of the healthcare professionals and vice versa. Thus,
health care worker should use self-awareness in order to influence the decision-making process
for the patient. The patient can make the decision using self-awareness regarding their health and
in this way only the worker and patient continue (Borkenhagen, 2016).
The various studies show that, self-awareness acts as an appropriate way for the healthcare
providers to engage the clients and help them to cure from their illness, positive mental health,
pain and improved psychological adjustments. The healthcare providers have been using self-
awareness as a way to present patients having ability to perform the short comings or limitations
that they face on the daily basis because of their illness. It further helps the patients in
empathizing other patients with similar problems and sharing the same remedy for recovery
(Samuelsson, 2010). Self-awareness helps to create great sense of gratitude in patient, which they
display while interacting with other patients with same issues and this helps to ease their pain.
The healthcare providers often use it in the communication process by allowing a patient to
reflect upon their previous life and takes measure so that they do not get back to the past and
cultivate good and healthy behavior. The self-assessment process helps patient to improve
psychologically and become more capable to manage anger, high self-esteem and empathy
which creates a better relationship with the healthcare workers (Castro, et al., 2017). The health
care providers are trained enough and knows how to communicate with the patient and have
experience with their patients which require them to use self-awareness as a means to ease pain
of the client and to make them feel better.
It has been found that the health care worker uses the Johari model framework either
intentionally or unintentionally as a self-awareness tool for the communication. The health care
providers and patient engage in self-awareness process through three stages which helps in
healing.
The three stages include present phase, transition and the regroup stage. The Johari model
framework is very important especially for the new health care worker who encounters problem
while communicating with their patient (Anon., 2017). It is difficult to pick the flaw in the
present phase so the healthcare workers seek help from the seniors where they interact with his
or her patients. Once the flaw is identified, the person will be able to find the resources or
processes that the he can use in solving the limitation of transition phase. In the last phase of
framework which is the regrouping stage the health workers use the changes in the patient to
resolve personal or hidden issues. The process helps in the healing of the patient. Although the
procedure is considered to be painful as in this the individual weakness in not visible (Martin,
2016). The patient at this stage needs to be adaptive to change into better individual which

enhances the healing process. When both the healthcare provider and patient understand each
other by effective communication then a strong relationship is built which further ensures proper
care from the health care provider to the patient through smooth healing process. The successful
implementation of this process demands to establish support groups in healthcare setting and
inviting the senior members for motivation and support (Dutsch, 2013). Most of the healthcare
providers have obtain positive results using this process. the health care provider keeps the
follow up with a patient even after their release to maintain personal relationship as self-
awareness is a continuous process.
Conclusion:
From the above paper it is evident that self-awareness is one of the most important tools in the
communication between the healthcare providers and the patient. It has also been referred to as a
therapeutic tool. An appropriate therapeutic environment for enhanced caring ensures that the
healthcare workers are self-aware and there is healthy worker and patent relationship. Self-
awareness not only improves life of the patient but it also helps in improving the life of
healthcare providers. It acts as an important tool in communication process between the
healthcare providers and patient. Thus, for this reason only each healthcare worker need to have
the skills of self-awareness as it is also taught in health causes. As it is a continuous process, it
takes lot of determination and time for the change. Therefore, the healthcare worker has to be
cautious in caring process of their patient. In conclusion it is apparent that both patient and
healthcare worker should practice self-awareness process in order to maintain healthy
relationship and environment for the process of cure.

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