Jessica works for the Fraser health care system. She coordinates home support for seniors who at the end of their life, or who are sick and wish to remain at home while they recover. Her job also involves staffing health care aides at various health care facilities. Jessica works on a multidisciplinary team with doctors, nurses, occupational therapists and social case managers. She is at her best when all the members of her team are working at their best and all are able to collaborate well together. An example of a time when she functioned at her best was when there was a flu outbreak at one of her facilities and she had to coordinate a plan to deal with the outbreak effectively. This involved quarantining affected individuals, contacting those who could have been exposed, and sending out written communication regarding the situation.
Three essential skills for Jessica’s role are: critical thinking, emotional intelligence and innovation. Jessica needs to be able to think on her feet and solve problems as they arise. There are many variables and things tend to change at the spur of the moment. She often has to drop one thing to address something urgent that has arisen. Emotional intelligence is important because her clients are often dealing with the end of a loved one’s life and emotions can run high. She needs to be able to respond rather than react, and to be empathetic and compassionate towards their situation. Innovation is necessary because one approach does not often work for every client. Jessica needs to think of new ways of getting tasks done according to each particular each situation. Fortunately, these skills are areas of strength for Jessica, and this contributes to why she loves her job so much. One area of weakness for her is conflict management. She has identified that she needs to learn how to better address situations where she needs to have a difficult conversation with someone without putting them on the defensive. She identified that her organization offers free courses in conflict-resolution and she is planning to take them.
Having a professional conversation with Jessica about her development would be very easy. She is a proactive person and has already thought about where she would like to be in five years. Her goal is to become a director of care for an home support site. She already has a plan in place: (1) to complete the Masters program; (2) to build partnerships and a network of people who are managers and directors to give her greater exposure; (3) gain more education through courses offered by her organization; (4) apply for interim management positions to demonstrate her management capabilities. It was a pleasure speaking with Jessica and I am sure that she will achieve her goals in the next five years.