Course Objective #3
Examine the associated concepts of communication, motivation, resistance, conflict, power, and negotiation.
Reflections on Course Content
In Week 6, I read The Art of Negotiation. This article explored how negotiation is a form of communication that can be an effective tool when managing conflict in the nursing environment. It taught that good negotiators have high emotional intelligence, which helps them to remain calm, manage their emotions, acknowledge others emotions and remain focused while negotiating (Cleary et al., 2018). This article inspired me to explore how I can improve my emotional intelligence and showed me that negotiation can be used with patients, with colleagues or with managers.
In Week 8 I read a fantastic article about giving and receiving feedback. It explained the relationship between power, communication and motivation by describing 3 types of feedback: Positive and affirming feedback (which motivates and helps others understand their strengths), constructive and developmental feedback (which helps others grow), and negative/critical feedback (which abuses power by dominating and diminishing others) (Kowalski, 2017).
In Week 8, I also had an interesting breakout room discussion about how poor workplace communication and passive-aggressive behaviour can lead to power imbalances in the workplace between experienced and inexperienced nurses.
In Week 11, we discussed the difference between equity and equality and explored how this relates to power structures in society. We discussed how privilege can provide certain individuals with less resistance and more power when accessing healthcare, education, and more. After this discussion (and viewing of the related infographic), I came to understand that equity means providing fair resources to actually “level the playing field” so that everyone can “see over the fence” or achieve health, safety, happiness, and success in society.
Reflections on Personally Discovered Content
Reflection #1
After viewing change initiative presentations in Week 10, a presentation on gender stereotypes in nursing piqued my interest on the relationship between power and gender in the nursing field. I discovered an article called Women in Health Academia: Power dynamics in nursing, higher education and research. From that article, I learned that despite male nurses being a minority in the nursing field, they’re more likely to be promoted to senior positions (Cleary et al., 2019). It also outlined challenges female nursing academics face in the male-dominated research sector. It identified that mentoring from female nurse academics to female nursing students is an important strategy for navigating these power dynamics (Cleart et al., 2019).
Reflection #2
During my research on gender roles and nursing, I also came across an interesting article that examined nursing career novels from the 1930s to the 1960s and their influence on people's motivation to become nurses. This article also examined how these novels reinforced harmful stereotypes and power dynamics, such as nursing being a career only for white women and nurses as handmaidens to physicians (Anthony et al., 2019). The article really helped me to understand how public perception of the nursing profession, often shaped by media and literature, can exclude people from the profession and perpetuate harmful narratives.
