Emotional Management and Personality as

Emotional Management and Personality as Formalized Instruments of Medical Treatment In Western medicine, treatment is typically defined according to surgical, chemical or mechanistic attention toward symptoms and ailment origins. This is an appropriate professional orientation for contending with the wide array of conditions which might afflict the human body. However, there is yet another level of medical attention which is considered in this discussion and which, when properly implemented, may offer compelling results.

The emotional condition of the patient will play a significant role in the process of treatment, recovery or persistence. This, in turn, is a condition which often hinges on the personalities extend by healthcare providers such as nurses and physicians. There is a compelling body of research to suggest that these qualities invoke emotional comfort in patients, which can be a fundamental instrument in achieving quality healthcare.

The research here proposes therefore that the utilization, extension and persistence of emotional management and personality orientation in the process of treating patients in all manner of treatment context can be shown to have markedly beneficial outcomes to either the health of the patient or the emotional well-being of the patient. Still, there is a need for continued dialogue on the subject, as many perceived benefits remain unproven.

Indeed, one of the core problems relating to the understanding expressed here is the reality that too little has been established empirically to achieve a universality or best practice approach to emotional management. Such is to say that while most healthcare practitioners can report with great confidence that emotional management is a critical part of the position, there remains a lack of decided evidence as to how we might best implement this understanding as a formal part of the work itself. Such is demonstrated by Landa et al.

(2009), who remark on the complexity of the field and, hence, the need to formalize emotional management as have been formalized other methods of professional orientation, integrity and practical ability. Accordingly, Landa et la argue that "for a profession that requires not only technical expertise but also psychologically oriented care, knowledge about the self in nursing would be crucial to further development and growth of the profession.

However, the role of emotions in the formation of nursing professionals has been scarcely studied." (Landa et al., 1) This suggests a core conflict between the opportunity and even the demand which should fall upon hospitals and even public officials responsible for healthcare policy-making and the reality of the profession today.

In consideration of this need for clarity and the potential expansiveness of medical benefits, the literature review conducted here will assess a set of articles which offer both an endorsement for this view on the value of emotion-based treatment approaches and an assessment of some of the specific ways relating to the extension of optimism, personal support and hope in which emotional connectivity and the display of personality on the part of health professional can and should be evaluated and implemented in a formalized manner.

Literature Review: The value of interpersonal orientation to the process of treatment is based in the importance of managing emotion to members of the healthcare profession. This is a complex aspect of the occupation which demands the practitioner to command both the practical aspects of medical treatment and the emotional response and propensities of patient, family and other healthcare providers. The inherently humanist nature of the occupation implications emotional processes in all areas of treatment and practice.

Before proceeding to a fuller examination of hope as the desired emotional outcome, it is appropriate to consider the theoretical foundation to this claim concerning emotional management. Accordingly, Wilson & Carryer (2008) provide an examination of the nursing profession with direct consideration to emotional management. Here, it is contended that "effective nursing practice requires the ability to recognise emotions and handle responses in relationships with clients and their families.

This emotional competence includes nurses managing their own emotional life along with the skill to relate effectively to the multiple colleagues and agencies that nurses work alongside." (Wilson & Carryer, 1) As we move further into the discussion of the personality displayed by the practicing nurse or physician and the impact which that can have on patient response and treatment outcome, the argument posited by Wilson & Carryer here above provides some grounding.

Namely, the indication is that the emotional response of the patient and the patient's surrounding family or other support system members will often hinge on the emotional fortitude and displays provided by healthcare workers. Nurses who are capable of presenting themselves with empathy and sensitivity will likely be those who have achieved the greatest internal emotional balance. This is a crucial aspect of survival in an occupation where the consequences of negative treatment outcomes can impose a lasting emotional toll on the practitioner.

The preservation and ability to display such emotions as optimism and empathy will be fundamental to the patient's likelihood to adapt the same outlook. In accordance with the study by Wilson & Carryer, this means that the practitioner who achieves the greatest success in this area will be one who is capable of responding with equanimity and, simultaneously, the appropriate level of humaneness, in the face of all possible patient conditions and outcomes.

To this end, "it has been argued that there is a connection between a nurse's ability to accept another person's emotional distress and their capacity to accept themselves and their own distress. Peplau (1988) calls this caring neutrality. She suggests that nurses are required to develop a level of congruence between what they say and how they act toward the persons with whom they work.

When nurses learn to process their own emotions, working with another person's emotion is made possible." (Wilson & Carryer, 1) The healthcare practitioner, the argument provided by Wilson & Carryer denotes, must reflect those emotions which he desires to yield from the patient. Therefore, the capacity to manage and rationalize the retention of hope on the part of the practitioner will be tantamount to the same on the part of the patient.

The correlation between emotional intelligence and success on the job on the part of nurses and nurse practitioners is significant not just with respect to the quality of the approach taken to the patient but indeed, toward the nurse's capacity to endure the stressors and exhaustion which are frequently a part of the field and occupation. This is reinforced in the findings by Fariselli et al.

(2008), which finds a connection between high emotional intelligence, the ability to negotiation the emotional rigors of the job and the longevity and advancement of career. Accordingly Fariselli et al.

contend that "in a sample of 68 professional midwives and obstetricians in a large urban hospital, emotional intelligence is strongly predictive of performance (66%), stress is slightly predictive (6% to 24%), and emotional intelligence is predictive of stress management (6.5%)" (Fariselli et al., 1) These findings are compelling insofar as the quality of healthcare and nursing today suffers unquestionably due to the high turnover, understaffing and low morale which are epidemic to nursing.

The durability of healthcare practitioners under many such conditions which are well outside the realm of their control denotes an emotional constitution which is absolutely crucial to effectiveness. Fariselli et al. go further to define what are referred to as the core competencies. This provides a basic framework for those areas in which certain behaviors and approaches to emotional management can function as recommendable practices in healthcare provision.

Accordingly, the study contends that "of the individual competencies, these four are the most powerful predictors of performance as measured by the Stress & Performance survey. The four outcomes individually predict between 43-49% of the variation in performance scores: * Consequential Thinking: 49% * Navigate Emotions: 48.4% * Intrinsic Motivation: 43.2% * Exercise Optimism: 43.2%" (Fariselli, 14).

This is important for constructing a strategy to formalize the understanding of nurses and healthcare workers of the emotional responsibilities both which can benefit their patients and which will serve them well in enduring the unique pressures, anxieties and emotional trials of the healthcare field.

For patients who are suffering from illness or injury, this emphasis on optimism constitutes the positive perception of recovery in some capacity, whether this is an aspiration to return to a state previously present before the onset of symptoms or simply to achieve personal milestones of recovery, this orientation toward the future is what distinguishes the presence of hope.

A belief in the prospect of something constituting an improvement of one's state, whether it is to the extent that some recovery is achieved or to the extent that one concedes to the embrace of death, may be understood as bearing the emotional characteristics demanded to be displayed by the healthcare practitioner as we have evaluated it here. The discussion provided by Clark (2002) offers an interesting lead point on the subject of hope in medicine by focusing on its history in research discussion and investigation.

Clark's review accounts for several points of inflection in the developing history of emotional orientation as part of an integrated strategy for medical treatment. The first point addressed by Clark's review determines that a fundamental change in medical perspective had begun to transpire with the assumption of varying clinical research investigations on the subject. This would contribute to what Clark identifies as a major shift in the way that physicians had begun to perceive and treat terminal illness.

As opposed to a cut and dry preparation of the patient for the certainty of death, Clark points to a juncture in the mid to late 20th century at which medical professionals had begun to adopt "an active rather than a passive approach to the care of dying people was promoted in which the fatalistic resignation of the doctor ('there is nothing more we can do') was supplanted by a determination to find new and imaginative ways to continue caring up to the end of life." (Clark, 2002) In addition to serving as a fundamental motivation for the continuing investigation of ways to extend life expectancy with or without the presence of supposedly terminal illness, the optimism here reflected serves to improve the quality of life for those in the final phases.

The simple expression of optimism -- not unrealistic or patronizing but conducive of an emotionally connected assurance that all possible measures will be taken to preserve life -- can have the impact of promoting a sense of value and support for one on the cusp of death. Even where life cannot be preserved, the expression of optimism suggests that these moments of life can be made more tolerable by the perspective taken by healthcare providers.

This idea speaks to another fundamental inflection point in the way that healthcare professional have begun to treat the emotional orientation of patients.

Clark points to a "growing recognition of the interdependency of mental and physical distress created the potential for a more embodied notion of suffering, thus constituting a profound challenge to the body-mind dualism on which so much medical practice of the period was predicated." (Clark, 2002) This period, late in the 20th century, has led us to the current consensus that there is indeed a real and tangible value to the emotional fortitude of one enduring a physical breakdown.

The presence of hope in the healthcare provider, we can clearly see, is likely to improve the prospect that even a terminally ill or age-advanced patient might adopt a hopefulness as well. This speaks to the opportunity for the healthcare provider to display personality through interest in the patient's emotional disposition. The patient is likely to respond positively where capable to indications of an interest beyond the physical body. This has even greater implications to a patient's life than a single visit or stay in the hospital though.

This is to indicate that the emotional disposition and preparation which the individual undergoes in the individual health circumstance will correlate to a lifetime of experience with the healthcare system. Positive and negative experiences involving hospital visits, concerning interactions with physicians and relating to past health concerns will precede one's entrance into a new healthcare experience. Therefore, one's emotional constitution can have a direct relationship to a history or pattern that speaks positively or negatively to expectations for a hospital or physician visit.

According to the text by Zerbe et al. (2006), "it is suggested that in healthcare it is the patients' journey through their lives (the macro contest), as well as their individual encounters with the system at different times of need (the micro context), that iteratively constitute the construction of the emotional terrain." (Zerbe et al., 146) This principle of emotional terrain transcends the concept of emotion relating to a single physician visit or stay in a hospital or long-care facility.

The patient will bring with her the weight of all manner of experiences. For adult and senior healthcare patients, a visit to or stay at a healthcare facility will be given emotional prelude by a personal history in which poor treatment by healthcare professionals, long waits for treatment in hospital emergency rooms, negative outcomes as a result of treatment practices or even a long lapse in medical attention manifesting as an unfamiliar fear of the hospital and the implications of serious diagnoses can have a stultifying psychological impact.

Indeed, as discussed here throughout, this can have distinctly negative treatment outcomes. To the text by Zerbe et al., this functions as an indicator that there is a need for medical practitioners and facilities throughout the healthcare sector to approach all patients through a continuum of positive emotional orientation. Standards dictating facility orientation should work to invoke a universality of best practices in emotional management. As the Zerbe et al.

text indicates, this is a goal which has been given philosophical grounding in the field but has yet to be formalized as is needed. Zerbe et al. contend that "although the terrain of healthcare has always dealt with the consequences of emotion or affect, for example, in the doctor-patient relationship, it is not seen as part of the explicit activity of the organization.

However, the use of metaphor of narrative, in the delivery of healthcare, is a notable exception, showing as it does that 'emotion words and emotion talk are key ingredients.'" (Zerbe et al., 146) A study by Eliott & Olver (2006) likewise provides an important body of insight into the subject of emotional consequences in medical proceedings. Its emphasis on the relationship between hope in the medical context and the object of coping with the end of life reveals the depths and persistence of hope as part of the human condition.

The merit of the overarching argument here is especially strengthened by the resolutions of this study, which demonstrate a fundamental value to hope in alleviating the pain, discomfort, fear and loneliness which can otherwise be the characteristic emotions of a recognition of the end of life. The functionality of hope in the face of impending death is particularly interesting. In cases of advanced age or advanced terminal illness, the physician or nurse's responsibility shifts from curative focus or aggressive treatment methodology to a focus on the alleviation of suffering.

In this context, healthcare professionals must be prepared to help ease such patients into death with as little anguish and as great a level of comfort as is possible. This is why such matters as acceptance, realism and a sense of support are all crucial emotional aspects of the treatment process.

Here, the capacity in the patient to summon hope, and the ability of healthcare providers to offer humane support to the extent of instilling hope, will together be essential to assisting patients in the difficult final phase of the life cycle.

Thus, "in the context of discussions about decision-making at the end of a terminal illness, when used as a noun, hope invariably referenced the medical domain -- focusing either on the objective probability of medical cure (typically taking the negative form "there is no hope"), or the subjective possession of the patient, needed to fight their disease." (Eliot & Olver, 2006) Without positive or negative connotation, this indicates that the concept of hope is a definite emotional presence as individuals face terminal conditions.

Whether it is realistic for one to fight or to submit to illness, hope makes a transition from an abstract sentiment to a real and tangible emotion which may either be palpable in its absence or powerfully evident in its presence. Managerial Applications: In considering the managerial applications of appealing to the emotional management prospects as they relate to treatment processes and outcomes, the Health Belief Model serves to inform practical ways of implementation.

This denotes that individuals will tend to approach healthcare and treatment according to their own ideas and prejudices herewith. The greatest limitation to this approach is, of course, the incapacity of some of the most afflicted patients to express themselves fully. Another limitation is the pointedly qualitative, observational and therefore non-empirical nature of the study conducted here. By and large, as Stokes & Turner (2006) note on this subject, related "literature is replete with claims that Registered Nurses engage in hope facilitation with their patients.

However, these claims are largely conjecture, with few studies empirically identifying the extent to which Registered Nurses use hope interventions with their patients." (p. 363) Indeed, the research investigation here follows a similar pattern, generally seeking to draw observations without making distinctions regarding control and experimental groups. Moreover there is made no real attempt to disprove or critique the value of hope as counterpoint. With this in mind, the greatest value of the emotion-based strategies which we examine here would be in their application.

We may ably suggest at least from the research which has been conducted that hope is not detectably threatening in any way to the process of recovery or coping with mortality. Moreover, it has already had proven applied success in other clinical contexts. Name, it is already true, according to Moore (2005), that "hope is at the heart of psychiatric nursing practice." (p.

100) Therefore, for the general subject of healthcare provision, we may focus on the sharply humanistic value of bringing hope to patients through positive emotional connectivity and the display of genuine personality, especially for those who may otherwise lack the proper support system. Moreover, it is.