Individuals consider their educational, technical, licensed or professional skills the most important aspects of their application and consideration for a position in healthcare. However, most employers equally value an individual’s soft skills when deciding to hire or promote. Soft skills are the things you do that make you a great employee outside of the technical skills that are needed for the job.

They are skills that an individual has that make him or her a great employee – no matter where they work, what they do, or their job title. For some people, these skills come naturally – for others they need to be developed, refined or strengthened. While these skills aren’t necessarily listed on job descriptions of duties, employees with well-developed soft skills are difficult to find and are very valuable to healthcare teams. This course will focus on these key skills, often soft skills, which help healthcare workers be successful members of their professional teams and increase the organization’s performance and competitiveness.

For whom: 

All healthcare professionals

Learning objectives:

At the end of the program, participants will be able to:

• Know, discuss and define “soft skills” and their relevance in the healthcare work environment
• List and evaluate current skills, and know other vital skills they would need to develop
• Determine development strategies to adopt in acquiring other required skills
• Develop skills to be assertive without being intimidating toward others
• Develop active listening skills that promote better work relationships and less medical errors
• Develop skills to influence and motivate others positively
• Develop skills for effective communication between patients, nurses and clinicians
• Identify differences between technical and non-technical professionals and manage the differences
• Differentiate communication style preferences to better understand, influence and connect with other medical professionals.
• Overcome others’ “automatic resistance” to ideas to build better understanding and acceptance of the team, reduced duplication, streamlined patient care and enabled specialist skills to be used more cost-effectively