Personal Development

Date : 05 / 10 / 2016

Stress, anxiety and difficulty coping are common issues raised by students which is one of the reasons for addressing it explicitly in SGW now.

The aim of this session is to:• encourage you to start thinking about your own personal

development• to provide you with activities to explore your strengths and

weaknesses and how you manage yourself with regard to your private and public identities, your study skills, coping skills and time management skills

• to highlight, improve and develop effective strategies for self-management both for now and for your future careers

By the end of this session you should be able to: • Identify and describe your different ‘selves’• Identify your own learning style• List and describe key principles of effective study• List and describe key principles of effective time

management• Describe effective strategies for coping with stress

Personal development is important because it helps us:

• Improve focus, clarity, organisation• Identify and develop our skills in

coping with stress, anxiety, change and uncertainty

• Problem solve and make good decisions under pressure

Being a good health professional requires:

• Self care (both personal and helping patients to self care)• Adaptability, flexibility and ability to cope with uncertainty

and change• Managing time and prioritizing• Recognising our limits• Awareness of personal health needs• Responding constructively to challenging situations• Being involved in teaching and mentoring others• Being a lifelong learner

• Personal development is a continual process of which we are often unaware.

• What we are hoping to do is make the process more explicit via exercises, discussion, tasks etc. which promote thought and self-discovery.

• The depth of personal development possible depends upon your involvement in the process: the more involved and engaged you are in the process, the more you will get out of it.

• There are three topics to explore in this session.

• It is unlikely you will be able to cover all three completely in the session so please note that some of the work will need to be done outside of the classroom

Identifying our different ‘selves’, our personality, and perceptions

The Johari Window:

Known by self Not known by self

Known by others The public self The blind self

Not known by

othersThe private self

The undiscovered

self

This suggests that we have 4 ‘selves’:

• The public self: the part we are happy to share with others and discuss openly

• The private self: the parts we keep to ourselves generally. May include aspects ofourselves which can potentially be embarrassing or shameful to expose toothers.

• The blind self: the parts which other people see in us but we don’t recognize,possibly due to lack of insight or lack of opportunity for feedback, or sometimesbecause others will not discuss it with us either to hold power over us or becausewe may not be receptive to hearing it.

• The undiscovered self: the parts which are yet to be discovered and may neverbe discovered. May include both good and bad aspects of ourselves. Can beuncovered to a certain extent with a combination of self-discovery andobservation and feedback from others- a shared discovery process. Can also beexplored with an experienced therapist.

• Often the public self reflects how we want others to see us.

• We select aspects of our selves to display to the outside world. In actual fact, we have many ‘public’ selves depending on who we are with and under what circumstances.

• We are going to start thinking about these different ‘roles’ we play which all form our identity.

• Complete the task

Now do the same task, this time thinking about your public self. How do you think/hope others see you? Use a different colour pen

so you can compare your responses.

Next run through the task again this time thinking of the qualities you think make up a good doctor/dentist or phamacist.

Discuss in pairs:• Are there any differences or similarities between your

private and public self? Why might that be? Do you think it is ok to have a discrepancy between the two?

• Do you find that indeed you actually have many different ‘public selves’ depending on which ‘role’ you are in? e.g. a friend, student, son/daughter, brother/sister, partner, professional etc

• Were there any similarities with your private or public self and what you stated as traits of a ‘good doctor’?

• Did your traits of a good healthcare professional match those of others in the group? Why/ Why not?

Scenario 1: You hear that someone you know and are not particularly friendly with on the course has failed the end of year exam. Everyone agreed it was a hard exam and you all had such a short amount of time to study (a few days of revision before the exam), but you yourself managed to work hard and pass along with about half of the year. The person who failed seems to be forever out socialising and rarely studying and is involved in all sorts of social and sports clubs. Why did they fail? How would you describe their behaviour?

Scenario 2: You find out that you failed the first year exam. Everyone said it was a really hard exam and only half the year passed anyway. You are involved in lots of university activities and have many social responsibilities. You are gutted about failing as you did attend all the lectures and studied constantly in between your social commitments, but there was only a few days to revise before the exam You just didn’t realise that it would be so much work- you can’t possibly study that much material in such a short amount of time! Why did you fail? How would you describe/ justify your behaviour?

Discuss as a group:

• What implications might this have for a doctor/dentist/pharmacist and how the patients’ problems and concerns are interpreted?

• What can a doctor do to overcome this potential problem?

Learning Styles, study skills and managing stress

Mostly As- Visual Learning Style: ‘seeing and reading’: preference for pictures, diagrams, demonstrations, displays, handouts, films,

flipchart etc. Will be able to perform a task after watching someone else do it or reading instructions first. These people tend

to like lists and written direction and instruction

Mostly Bs- Auditory Learning Style: ‘listening and speaking’: Learns by listening; the spoken word by either self or others. Will

be able to perform a new task after listening to spoken instructions.

Mostly Cs- Kinaesthetic Learning Style: ‘touching and doing’: Learns via physical experience- touching, feeling, holding, doing, practical hands on experience. These people like to jump in and

have a go, experiment and don’t read instructions first.

Study skills and coping with stress:

Think of:• Some specific study techniques or strategies to

enhance memory• Ideas about how to plan for study (i.e. managing

study time)• How to avoid procrastination• How to stay motivated- what motivates you?• How to cope with stress• Any other study tips

Summary points regarding learning styles, study skills and managing stress:

• we all have different preferences in terms of how we learn

• what works for one person may not work for another

• we may use different techniques depending on the circumstances and what it is we are learning

• there is benefit in challenging ourselves to practice other ways of learning

• motivation and procrastination are closely linked and the best way to address these are with clear goals and plans to refer to, and practicing self-discipline by identifying and addressing the reasons for procrastinating

• establishing good time management, organizational skills and a balance between work and social activities will itself help to limit stress

Time management

• Draw a pie chart of how you currently spend your time overall (including sleep) on average.

• Identify all of the tasks and events which make up your week such as sleeping, eating, socialising, studying, lectures and teaching, watching TV, reading, travel etc and plot them on a simple pie chart. For example, if you sleep 8 hours a night on average, 1/3 of your pie chart would be ‘sleep

• identify the areas you would like to change (i.e. spend more or less time doing), or even things you would like to have in the ‘pie’ that you currently don’t; ‘If I had more time I would...’

• Identifying how we spend our time is the first step to effectively managing our time.

• When we know where we invest our energy, we can start making adjustments for better use of our time.

• So it is important to think in advance- what do I need to plan for NOW to make later easier?

• What do I need to include in my ‘pie’?

In groups discuss:

• What implications does this have on how you manage your time and approach tasks?

• With a lot of complex topics all seemingly important to cover in a short space of time your expectations of being able to cover everything may be quite low. How are you going to manage this?

Follow the instructions step by step on the sheet of paper. First one to complete the task wins!!!

• Read through all of the instructions carefully

• Get out a blank piece of paper and pen

• Draw a simple house with two windows and a door

• Add the sun

• Draw a tree on the left hand side of the house

• Draw 5 stick people around the house- three on the right and two on the left

• Draw a mountain in the background with 10 trees

• Add 6 birds in the sky

• On your stick people draw trousers on three; one on the left and two on the right

• Draw skirts on the remaining people

• Give all the people on the left curly hair

• Give all the people on the right straight hair

• Draw a dog far on the left side of the picture

• Draw a cat on the far right side of the picture

• Complete only the first four items on this list

• Sign your name at the bottom

• Fold your picture in half

• Who didn’t read the instructions first? Why?

• Who misinterpreted the first instruction (perhaps as just a reminder to read each of the instructions carefully to ensure you draw it accurately)?

• Who thought it was a waste of time to read them all first?

• What does this show us?

Summary points regarding time management:

• Start incorporating your study time now- it will make a huge difference later

• Make use of a written timetable to help you follow through on your plans

• Take a glance at the tasks/ topics you plan to cover and make a list of priorities- take an overall look at what it is you want to achieve

• Break large tasks/ topics into smaller chunks

Prepare yourself for periods of stress and feeling overwhelmed. Practice taking control of your thoughts and behaviours and try

out coping strategies (some are outlined in the portfolio )

And a couple of other key points…

• Prepare your environment- get your resources ready, clear your work space, put up your timetable where you can see it

• Remember to take breaks at least every 50 minutes- balance your study with some time out.