Health & Social Care Unit 4: Reflective Essay on Values & Teamwork

This essay provides a reflective analysis of professional values within the context of health and social care, emphasizing the importance of equality, compassion, and dignity in service delivery. The author identifies personal strengths such as punctuality and commitment to ethical conduct, while also acknowledging weaknesses in interpersonal communication and cultural competence when interacting with culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) clients. The essay further explores the dynamics of teamwork, highlighting barriers to effective collaboration such as poor communication and unclear goals, and referencing Belbin's team roles and Tuckman's stages of team development. The author, positioned as a 'shaper' within a team, discusses efforts to resolve conflicts and foster respect among team members, ultimately concluding that strong communication and mutual understanding are crucial for enhancing team performance and ensuring quality healthcare service delivery. Desklib offers a platform for students to access this and other solved assignments.

Running head: HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE -UNIT 4
Health and social Care -UNIT 4
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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The term caring can be defined as the ability of social workers to incorporate the five
core values which are highly crucial in professional nursing (Batenburg, van Walbeek and in der
Maur 2013). The above mentioned nursing values include dignity, altruism, autonomy, dignity
and social justice and these values are found to be highly essential for baccalaureate education.
In thus reflective essay, I will not only be focusing on my strength as well as weaknesses but will
also determine the influences of the same in the field of social care as well as health care.
As a healthcare service provide the three chief professional values I maintain while
providing care to a healthcare service user are equality, compassion and dignity. As per my
opinion, demonstrating respect and compassion for both the colleagues as well as healthcare
service users enhances the performance as well as bonding of a team. In my professional life, I
always ensure to treat all my peers and clients with respect and dignity, irrespective of their
financial condition, educational qualification, social status and other personal attributes. During
my professional life, I personally feel that, for a healthcare service user, respectful attitude of the
healthcare service providers towards him to get recovered completely. Apart from valuing the
dignity and demonstrating compassion to my peers and clients, I always embrace equality and
justice in my professional life. This process involves recognizing as well as practicing the
responsibilities as well as rights of myself and my team members. In order to demonstrate the
commitment towards social justice, principles and democracy, I always maintain transparency
and fairness in my practices with respect to age, gender and disability status of an individual. The
above mentioned values are generally complex and are referred to as “ideals that shapes
professional practices” (Kitson et al. 2013). Apart from the three above mentioned values, the
fact that I always try to maintain punctuality and abide by all the rules as well as regulations
associated with my profession can be considered as two of my strengths.

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While the above mentioned factors can be considered as my strengths, it is undeniable
that I also have several weaknesses which adversely affect my performance as efficient
healthcare service users. Two of my major weaknesses include lack of effective communication
skills and rigidity in the thought process when it comes to CALD (Culturally and Linguistically
diverse) clients. Lack of interpersonal communication skills provides hindrance in my way of
exchanging thoughts and feelings with my peers and clients. Not only that, healthcare users who
are under my supervision often find it difficult to freely share their feelings as well as
communicate with me. However, in my profession, effective communication with the clients is a
vital factor that imposes a high impact on the welfare of the patients. Effective communication is
also crucial in order to create as well as maintain a bond with the peers and thus create an healthy
professional relationship (Crawford and LePine 2013). Hence, in order to enhance my
professional performance and boding with my peers I should master the art of interpersonal
communication. Another barrier to my professional life includes cultural incompetence towards
the CALD clients. This weakness of mine acts as a barrier in the process of demonstrating
respect towards the beliefs and practices of my CALD team members and clients along with
responding according to their cultural and linguistic requirements. Hence, in order to eradicate
the issue I am learning the importance of cultural competence and pursuing education on the
same.
The fact that I am punctual makes me an reliable employee and provides me with the
capability of completing my tasks within the stipulated time. Additionally, my virtue of
compassion, dignity and equality helps me to enhance the experience, quality of health services
and the overall health outcomes of the clients under my supervision. When it comes to my

3HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE -UNIT 4
weaknesses, I am constantly working on eradicating them and provide my clients with a
healthcare service that will be highly satisfactory.
Several barriers can be encountered that hinders the way of executing an effective
teamwork and create an uphill battle. Effective teamwork helps an organization to provide their
clients with an outstanding outcome. It has the potential to enhance the communication,
collaboration and intellect of accountability within a workforce (Deacon and Cleary 2013). In my
workplace, I have evidenced several barriers that has the potential to hinder the performance of
the team. Poor communication between the team members can be considered as one of them.
According to the researchers, while good communication can enhance the performance of a
team, poor communication between the team leader or the team members has the potential to
deteriorate the performance of the entire team (Alfred et al. 2013). Hence, as a team member, I
always remain aware of team communication and try to identify instances where poor
communication hinders the performance of our team. Failure to identify a specific and
appropriate goal can be referred to as another issue that prevents the progress of a team. Setting a
fixed goal is highly crucial for achieving success for a team. Failure of this factor results in
distortion of job duties. According to Belbin’s theory, team role can be defined as a tendency to
behave, interrelate and contribute with others in a specific way (Belbin 2014).
The chief team roles as being stated by Belbin includes resource investigator, plant
coordinator, monitor, shaper, implementer and completer. I am recruited in the team as a shaper
and my job role includes provision of drive to ensure that the operations of the team and that they
do not lose their focus. According to Tuckman’s theory, four phases of team includes forming,
storming, norming and performing (Seck and Helton 2014). In spite of the fact the fact that all
our team member were not able to get together in the forming stage, a good relationship has

4HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE -UNIT 4
develop within us in the norming stage (Galegher, Kraut and Egido 2014). I as a shaper, have
resolved several personality clashes and encouraged demonstration of respect and compassion
towards the fellow team mates.
Finally it can be concluded that considering the fact good communication and
understanding are highly crucial to enhance and maintain the performance of the team, every
team members should show effort to incorporate the 2 in their professional practice.

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Reference List
Alfred, D., Yarbrough, S., Martin, P., Mink, J., Lin, Y.H. and Wang, L.S., 2013. Comparison of
professional values of Taiwanese and United States nursing students. Nursing ethics, 20(8),
pp.917-926.
Batenburg, R., van Walbeek, W. and in der Maur, W., 2013. Belbin role diversity and team
performance: is there a relationship?. Journal of Management Development, 32(8), pp.901-913.
Belbin, R.M., 2014. Method, reliability & validity, statistics & research: A comprehensive
review of Belbin team roles. Belbin UK, pp.1-26.
Crawford, E.R. and LePine, J.A., 2013. A configural theory of team processes: Accounting for
the structure of taskwork and teamwork. Academy of Management Review, 38(1), pp.32-48.
Deacon, M. and Cleary, M., 2013. The reality of teamwork in an acute mental health
ward. Perspectives in Psychiatric Care, 49(1), pp.50-57.
Galegher, J., Kraut, R.E. and Egido, C., 2014. Time matters in groups. In Intellectual
teamwork (pp. 37-76). Psychology Press.
Kitson, A., Marshall, A., Bassett, K. and Zeitz, K., 2013. What are the core elements of patient‐
centred care? A narrative review and synthesis of the literature from health policy, medicine and
nursing. Journal of advanced nursing, 69(1), pp.4-15.