Why Patience is Key to a Successful Career in Healthcare
Having the right character or personality traits for your chose profession is important to any career, but especially to the healthcare profession. Nowhere is that truer than in the healthcare profession. Healthcare workers must handle daily stresses along with the difficulties inherent in dealing with sick patients, worried families, and the public in general. Here’s why patience is one of the most required character traits found in any healthcare worker—anytime, but certainly during today’s global pandemic.
Patience is One of Several Virtues for the Healthcare Worker
Healthcare workers must exhibit patience as part of their standard operating procedure. Working with the general public can sometimes be very difficult; ask any retail worker or customer service agent. But for the healthcare worker, the public they deal with is often highly stressed. People don’t act their best when they are sick. They also can behave inappropriately when they are stressed and worried about a sick loved one. It’s an untenable position for the healthcare worker who must deal with everyone from uncooperative children and overly controlling parents, to people exhibiting signs of mental illness or erratic behavioral conditions, and so many more challenging conditions. Healthcare workers must do all this and find a way to also calmly collaborate with their colleagues during some very stressful situations. Having patience can help healthcare workers deal with all these things while still providing quality care to their patients. But there are other similar character traits necessary to our nation’s healthcare workers. They include:
- Compassion for people helps healthcare workers be more patient when dealing with difficult people and situations during the delivery of healthcare services. Having compassion requires a great deal of patience and an understanding of another person’s situation. Medical patients are vulnerable, and having a compassionate caretaker who is also patient can ease their discomfort in the situation.
- Patience is a part of the emotional stability necessary to work in the field of healthcare. Emotional maturity or emotional intelligence is an essential trait for anyone in healthcare delivery. This characteristic helps healthcare workers deal with the daily stresses and strains of working in the profession. While the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the burden of healthcare professionals, anyone coming into the professional must generally be able to handle a high level of pressure, whether their job is a front line receptionist or ER nurse.
- Communication skills are also uniquely linked to having patience in the field of healthcare. Caretakers must understand when to take a deep breath and try a different approach toward communicating with families and patients. But patient communication is also critical to the backend of healthcare. For example, medical billers and coders must deal with a highly complex healthcare reimbursement system of private and public insurance carriers, each with different rules for paying healthcare providers.
Patience is the thread holding all of these character traits together. Healthcare workers find themselves having to repeat themselves several times when providing care. Or, they may find themselves dealing with a tough family member who takes out their worry on the healthcare provider. Healthcare workers even need patience when dealing with difficult doctors or healthcare insurance companies that refuse to pay up or even patients that are stubborn or otherwise difficult to handle. Through it all, the healthcare provider must dig deep to exhibit the patience necessary to do the job.
The Custom Group of Companies would like to again express our gratitude to our nation’s patient, persistent, and brave healthcare workers as they serve on the frontline of the COVID-19 crisis.
