Health science is an introductory course that educates students on the various opportunities that are available in the healthcare industry. From it, students can healthcare students can choose what professional path to follow. However, once the students choose their professional paths, they may experience problems in their professional careers arising from workplace attitude, professional attire, and non-verbal communication.

Workplace Attitude

workplace attitudes are among the most popular and influential inquiry areas in organizational psychology (Judge & Kammeyer-Muller, 2012). They encompass the feelings that employees have towards the different aspects of their working environment. Bad workplace attitudes such as rudeness, laziness, gossiping, or any other negative attitudes that lower the overall morale caused by personal problems or workplace events like payment cuts can impact work negatively. It may involve cranky managers, colleagues, or customers. One person’s bad workplace attitude can have ramifications on the operations of an entire organization (Bartel, Freeman, Ichniowski & Kleiner, 2003). For example, if one member of the staff complains, their discontent may trickle down to other members. Moreover, it might affect customers through bad customer service, thus leading to discontent customers. The best way to handle negative workplace attitudes is to allow problematic employees to come back to the track before taking action. Once an employee raises how their negative behavior affects their performance and their colleagues’ performance one may approach them about the behavior and look for possible solutions.

Professional attire

Professional attire is the code of dressing that is used in core conservative professions with strict dress codes. Uniforms play a critical role in the delineation of occupational boundaries and professional identity in the healthcare system (Timmos & East, 2011). In light of this, professionals need to adhere to the set code of dressing that demonstrates professionalism. Problems arising from professional wear may include unkempt attire such which may be frayed or dirty. It may cause ramifications on patients’ confidence in their healthcare professionals, raising questions on whether they will properly care for their patients if they cannot be bothered by their appearance and attire. Adopting unique colors for attires for different departments can address some problems arising from professional attire. For instance, the pediatric department should embrace colorful clothes so that they do not seem threatening. Moreover, professionals should be clean, wear well-fitting clothes, adopt white coats, and scrubs (Bearmna, Bryant, Leekha, Mayer, Munoz Price, 2014). Other ways include keeping makeup subtle, jewelry simple, and keeping short nails and neat hair.

Nonverbal communication

A significant part of communication is non-verbal. They include posters, facial expressions, tone variation, gestures, and eye contact. They impact relations and reveal peoples’ characters. Problems arising from non-verbal communication. Problems arise from non-verbal communication in healthcare because of different cultures. For instance, some cultures believe that eye contact with the opposite gender is rude. Therefore, healthcare professionals should know different cultural values to provide effective health care. Being mindful of body languages such as facial expressions, eye contact, and tonal variations provides healthcare professionals with greater access to their patients (Chahal, 2017). it can impact patient compliance, engagement, and outcome.

References

Bartel, A., Freeman, R., Ichniowski, C., & Kleiner, M. M. (2003). Can a work organization have an attitude problem? The impact of workplaces on employee attitudes and economic outcomes (No. w9987). National Bureau of Economic Research.

Bearman, G., Bryant, K., Leekha, S., Mayer, J., Munoz-Price, L. S., Murthy, R., … & White, J. (2014). Healthcare personnel attire in non-operating-room settings. Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, 35(2), 107-121.

Chahal, K. (2017). How your body language affects patient care. Current Psychiatry, 16(6).

Judge, T. A., & Kammeyer-Mueller, J. D. (2012). Job attitudes. Annual review of psychology, 63, 341-367.

Timmons, S., & East, L. (2011). Uniforms, status and professional boundaries in hospital. Sociology of health & illness, 33(7), 1035-1049.