Healthcare administrator might encounter

BHA 3202, Standards for Health Care Staff 1

Course Learning Outcomes for Unit III

Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:

4. Discuss the impact personal skills have on the workplace.
4.1 Identify how stress affects work performance.
4.2 Consider how different types of thinking can build personal skills.

Course/Unit
Learning Outcomes

Learning Activity

4.1
Unit Lesson
Chapter 5
Unit III Essay

4.2
Unit Lesson
Chapter 4
Unit III Essay

Reading Assignment

Chapter 4: Thinking and Reasoning Skills

Chapter 5: Stress Management

Unit Lesson

Recently, José has been reflecting on what professionalism means when one is a healthcare administrator.
He has come to realize that being reasonable about expectations one has about others and oneself plays a
big part in being professional. Understanding how stress can undermine personal and professional goals and
communication with others is something that José has been reading about in the healthcare administration
journals, but he is not sure he understands the concept after reading that there is good and bad stress. This
was a concept he never thought about before.

José decided to ask Jane about how she handled stress. It surprised him that the first thing she shared was
that job-related stress can lead to the healthcare administrator distancing himself or herself from others and
even to poor personal health, not to mention poor organizational health. She spoke of how the employees, as
well as the administrator, can feel trapped and feel a lack of empowerment when faced with high levels of on-
the-job stress. She added that it is the role of the healthcare administrator and leader of the team to help
guide everyone through periods of high stress (Porter-O’Grady & Malloch, 2015).

Jane suggested that José read an article titled “Ten Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I Became a
Health Officer” by Frieden (2016). She said that knowing what to expect could help reduce stress for
everyone but that it was crucial to understand that some stress is good. She also pointed out that what
someone might consider to be good stress is what another person might consider to be bad stress (Colbert &
Katrancha, 2016). Jane shared characteristics of good and bad stress with José.

Characteristics of good stress are listed below:

• short-term,

• expected, and

UNIT III STUDY GUIDE

Thinking About Stress

BHA 3202, Standards for Health Care Staff 2

• perceived as positive.

• Examples are listed below:
o getting married,
o being promoted, or
o winning the lottery.

Characteristics of bad stress are listed below:

• unrelenting/continuous,

• unexpected, and

• perceived as negative.

• Examples are listed below:
o death of a loved one,
o being fired from a position, or
o a disaster.

Jane helped José begin to understand what the different types of stress meant and how each could influence
a person’s work performance and health. Jane pointed out that the different ways of thinking can help a
person recognize and deal with stress. Applying various thinking strategies can also allow a person to use

stress productively to meet organizational, personal, and professional goals. How you think about stress is the
key to making stress work for you.

Jane encouraged José to watch for signs of stress in himself and others. Knowing what to watch for means
that one can start managing the stress and finding ways to cope with it. We all have stress; but the better
José learns to recognize it and deal with it personally, the more equipped he will be as an administrator to
help others in the workplace. Signs of stress can manifest in our bodies or in our emotions, something José
knew instinctively from how he responds to stress. Jane listed some of the physical and emotional signs
of stress.

Physical signs of stress are listed below:

• lump in throat;

• nausea;

Consider This!

Stress affects us all differently. José has begun to reflect on the stressors in his life and has started
categorizing them so he can better control his reactions to stress.

When thinking about the types of stress, José created a table to list his good stress and his bad stress.
He entered each stressor he had in the chart, and some of the stressors he was experiencing are listed
below:

• applying for the healthcare administrator position,

• proposing to his fiancé,

• his best friend moving to a different state, and

• a new physician being hired in the healthcare clinic.

How José placed each of the aforementioned stressors in his chart surprised him. He had thought that
proposing to his fiancé would be a positive stressor, but he found that it caused him to clench his teeth
and that he was not sleeping well since he made the decision. He discovered that, while he loved his
fiancé, a marriage meant planning and paying for a wedding, merging two homes, and sharing things
that a single man does not have to share with another. José was discovering that stress is multifaceted
and not as easy to categorize as he had thought.

BHA 3202, Standards for Health Care Staff 3

• insomnia;

• jaw, neck, or back pain; and

• headaches.

Emotional signs of stress are listed below:

• distancing from others,

• feeling depressed,

• being easily angered,

• eating too much or too little, and

• feeling hopeless.

It was becoming clear to José that his body and emotions were sending signals to him that he was under
stress. It was also becoming clear that others around him at work were sending signals that they were under
stress as well. José asked Jane for tips on how to deal with the stress and how he could cope with it now that
he recognized it.

Jane reminded José that thinking critically and reflecting about the stress he is under can help him develop
coping strategies that will fit within his career goals and help meet organizational goals.

José decided to do a little research on what critical thinking was to be sure he understood Jane’s point. He
found that critical thinking is being objective in analyzing a situation, something that the emotional signs of
stress could interfere with (Colbert & Katrancha, 2016). He discovered that critical thinking means utilizing
both critical listening and critical questioning. To listen critically means to stop assuming we know what the
other person will say next or how we are going to answer. It means that we pause before replying, reflect on
what was actually said, and seek to learn if we actually did hear what the other person meant (Porter-O’Grady
& Malloch, 2015).

José has discovered that not all stress is bad and that, more importantly, he can apply various thinking
strategies to identify and deal with what he experiences as stress. Understanding this will help him as an
administrator in helping others manage stress in the workplace. One thing Jane has also helped him
understand is that not all that he believes is stress is real. Sometimes, he has found, we all worry about things
that do not happen or will not happen. Understanding that has gone a long way toward ensuring he will

Consider This!

In his quest to understand and deal with his stress, José has been reading and thinking about how
he can cope better with stress. In reflecting back on the four stressors he identified earlier (i.e.,
applying for the healthcare administrator position, proposing to his fiancé, his best friend moving to a
different state, and the new physician being hired in the healthcare clinic), he finds that there are
several things he can do actively cope with them.

José’s first actions are already in progress as he is recognizing the things that cause him stress. With
this understanding, he can then decide which can be eliminated and which can possibly be
reordered from bad to good stress. José has to consider how other coping strategies can help him
deal with the stress he cannot eliminate.

He asks himself the questions below.

• Which of the four stressors can I deal with by managing my time better?

• Can I approach someone I trust to help me manage these sources of stress—someone to be
my support?

• What can I do to redirect myself when these stressors seem overwhelming?

• How can I deal with the insomnia?

• What foods and activities will help with the physical and emotional signs of stress?

BHA 3202, Standards for Health Care Staff 4

actually be dealing with the stressors he faces at work and at home proactively, using the knowledge to better
the organization, his colleagues, and himself.

References

Colbert, B. J., & Katrancha, E. D. (2016). Career success in health care: Professionalism in action (3rd ed.).

Cengage Learning.

Frieden, T. R. (2016). Ten things I wish someone had told me when I became a health officer. American

Journal of Public Health, 106(7), 1214–1218.

Porter-O’Grady, T., & Malloch, K. (2015). Quantum leadership: Building better partnerships for sustainable

health (4th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Suggested Reading

In order to access the following resource, click the link below.

The following reading is one that José discovered as he reflected on what to expect if he is hired for the
healthcare administrator position. The article has helped relieve some of the stress he was feeling about the
unknowns such as what a career move would mean.

Frieden, T. R. (2016). Ten things I wish someone had told me when I became a health officer. American

Journal of Public Health, 106(7), 1214–1218.
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Learning Activities (Nongraded)

Nongraded Learning Activities are provided to aid students in their course of study. You do not have to submit
them. If you have questions, contact your instructor for further guidance and information.

In order to access the following resource, click the link below.

You are encouraged to search the CSU Online Library or other reputable Internet resources for further
information on recognizing, managing, and avoiding stress. This knowledge will not only assist you personally
but will also help you to build skills for helping your employees.

The following article discusses how organizations can take primary-level interventions to deter stress among
employees and is a great place to start.

Robertson, I. (2017). Stress avoidance. Occupational Health, 69(1), 16–17.

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