Everyone working in Aged Care provides invaluable assistance to residents and patients. Working together, Clinical Care Coordinators, Clinical Care Managers, Registered Nurses, Residential and Facility Managers, ACFI Specialists and Personal Care workers ensure that the best care possible is
provided, when and where needed.
Delivering high-quality person-centred care requires excellent communication and relationship building skills, responsiveness, accuracy, problem-solving, empathy, self-motivation and collaboration with team members.
These are the skills of Emotional Intelligence, which include: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skill.
In this 5 part HPG educational series we will discuss each of the components of Emotional Intelligence.
Part 4: Empathy
Empathy means thoughtfully considering other’s feelings, along with other factors, in the process of making decisions. It doesn’t mean adopting other people’s emotions as one’s own and trying to please everybody – because that would make action impossible.
People with empathy understand the emotional make-up of others – they know what they are feeling. People with empathy are attuned to subtleties in body language – they can hear the message beneath the words being spoken.
In today’s team-based environment empathy is an important component of collaboration. Within teams everyone must be able to sense and understand
the view points of others in the group and to encourage them to speak openly about their feelings.
The following are interview questions focusing on Empathy.
As a candidate, think through specific examples from your Aged Care experience and highlight your successes during your interview.
As an interviewer use these questions, and the responses you hear, to determine a candidate’s strengths.
Interview questions:
1. What does empathy mean to you?
2. In the workplace why do you think empathy is important?
3. Could you please describe a time when you used empathy to better understand someone else.
4. Tell me about your team members.
5. What’s important to them?
As a candidate, be prepared to offer in-depth examples when further questioned by your interviewer.
As the interviewer, listen to the answers given and probe further for additional insight.