Unit 4 Personal and Professional Development in Health and Social Care

Unit 4 Personal and Professional Development in Health and Social Care

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Q1 Understand how personal values and principles influence individual contributions to work in health and social care settings

1.1 Compare personal values and principles with the principles of support for working in health and social care

Personal values and principles determines the way we think, behave and how we deliver care to service users. (Martin, 2003). A value represents something that is precious to us and we do not want to lose. It encourages us to do certain things and to avoid others. In short, values control our behaviour and our responses to situations. (Thompson, 2005). Personal values are based on impacts of beliefs and inclinations, culture, political outlooks, interest and priorities. (Martin, 2003) They also include principles about how we should care for others. (Nolan, 2010)

Consequently, virtues like loyalty, perseverance, respect, dignity, honesty and equality are based on values. (Garnham, 2013). For example, if I hold the above values, I will treat service users as unique individuals, I will not be judgemental rather I will involve service users in decisions about their care and I allow them to make choices about their personal lives.

Nevertheless, there are principles of care (that is, professional values) that underpin the delivery of best possible care by care workers irrespective of their personal values, they are: individuality, rights, privacy, choice, independence, dignity, respect and partnership. (Sussex, Scourfield and Herne, 2008)

Professional care values are principles against which we can measure the quality of our service delivery and how we respond to the values of service users. Therefore as our personal values define who we are, our professional values that define the practitioner that we are. (Tee, Brown, and Carpenter, 2012).

Undeniably, personal values and professional values are often in sync with each other because most people go into the care sector because they are caring and its care values are already part of their personal values. Consequently, as most the professional care values are already part of one’s personal value, it is easy to act consistently with these professional values.

1.2 assess how personal culture and experience influence own role in supporting users of services and others in health and social care settings

We have noted that values are define who we are and so values have great impact on our contribution at work. For example, as a carer, if I subscribe to the value of equality and respect, I will make sure that each service user needs are met irrespective of the fact that some of the service users have a range of diseases. Furthermore, as respect is important to me, I will adopt a non-judgemental approach to meeting the needs of all service users no matter their condition.

Additionally, if I believe in confidentiality and professionalism, I will ensure that the personal details of these service users are kept in locked filing cabinet or on a password protected computer so that it can only be accessed by authorised staff. I will also make sure that I discuss their personal matters with authorised people in an appropriate place which is in line with care values and empowering for the service.

However to consistently act in line with my values and care values, I need to be aware of my values. This is because self-awareness is needed for reflective practice, and for providing better services to meet the service users’ needs (Burns and Bulman, 2000)

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