Being a healthcare professional is not easy these days. There is a lot of challenges faced by healthcare professionals that stunts them from moving forward in their career. “The CareerBuilder survey also asked healthcare professionals if their current or most recent employer offered a number of different employee development programs, including in-house skills training, education reimbursement, technology training and opportunity for innovation. Of the 10 programs listed, only one — in-house skills training — was answered 'yes' by more than 50 percent of survey takers. Interestingly, employers felt differently: In response to the same question, more than 50 percent of employers said they offered in-house skills training, education reimbursement, flexible work schedules, cross-training and the opportunity to mentor others”.I have been working in hospital X for a year. I created a personal development plan to improve myself as an individual and as a working colleague. In order to advance my career progress I have to come up with a personal development plan.
Personal development plan helps us guide us in a sense of direction. It is a process includes the vital details to achieve, to identify our strengths that we have and the improvement that needed to be made to achieve our goals. To develop a personal development plan, first we need to set our list of goals and prioritize them. SMART analysis helps one to achieve a realistic goals under a period of time. Secondly, we need to use SWOT analysis to recognize our strengths and opportunities to overcome weakness and threats that stunt us from achieving our goals. Thirdly, we have to develop new skills to take action to achieve the listed goals. Then, we have to create a support system by recognizing the things and people that will be able to support us to achieve our goals. Finally, after taking action to achieve, the progress should be measured to motivate us to stay persistent towards the goal.
From the list of goals, I am prioritizing two important goals for me to progress my career path. They are, getting in shape and specializing in scrubbing for orthopedic surgeries. I’m prioritizing those two goals because in order to be a good assistant I need to be physically strong, as it requires muscle mass to withstand prolonged orthopedic surgeries which is common in orthopedic surgeries. Those two goals also meets the SMART analysis which make it attainable, hence I chose them.
What is SMART analysis Setting a personal development goal is not an easy task including determining how to effectively measure and achieve them. Many would have similar goals but we achieving it is what defines our success. In order to attain success setting an unmediated, actionable and quantifying goals are mandatory. S.M.A.R.T is an acronym that stands for “specific, measurable, attainable, and time- bound”. It is used to set out the right objectives which is important for leaders and managers to guide an individual or an organization in the right direction. SMART is an acronym that has been credited to both Peter Drucker and G.T.Doran , though it is difficult to identify whether either of these two were really the first people to use the term ‘SMART’ with reference to objectives. SMART stands for:-
Specific – outline in a clear statement precisely what is required.
Measurable – include a measure to enable you to monitor progress and to know when the objective has been achieved.
Achievable – objectives can be designed to be challenging, but it is important that failure is not built into objectives. Employees and managers should agree to the objectives to ensure commitment to them.
Relevance - focus on outcomes rather than the means of achieving them
Timely - (or time-bound) – agree the date by which the outcome must be achieved.
A SWOT analysis helps an institution or an individual to develop a full awareness of all the factors involved in making a vital decision. SWOT analysis should be done before one commit to any sort of company action, whether it is exploring new initiatives, revamping internal policies, considering opportunities to pivot or altering a plan midway through its execution. This analysis aids to discover suggestions and strategies, with a focus on grasping strength and opportunities to overcome weaknesses and threats. SWOT stands for strength, weakness, opportunity and threat.
Moreover, to make my goals achievable, I need to have a valid action plan that takes me through a progress. Action plan helps me to focus on what I want accomplish and how am I able to do it. It helps me to reflect on my accomplishment and plan to attain more throughout the year. Furtherer, to make my goals achievable I have to make a better time management plan by executing a routine that includes exercising. “We cannot 'manage' time. What we can do is to learn to manage ourselves and other resources in relation to time.” I have to discipline myself to follow the routine consistently to show the results.
To accomplish my goal to specializing in scrubbing for orthopaedic cases, I need to do my case study before scrubbing into a case for better understanding. When I do a case study before scrubbing it will higher the chance for me to scrub efficiently. I also need to be mentally stable will I’m scrubbing because I am responsible for a person’s life. Mental stability could be achieved through meditation. I need to at least spend five minutes a day to meditate to keep my mind in place. I could also join boxing classes as Boxing aids in build confidence or a ‘fighting spirit’ that enables me to cope better with challenging situations life throws at me.
Setting goals may be easy to just list out but putting them into reality takes a lot of hard work, discipline and consistency to accomplish the goal. “The distance between dreams and reality is called as the discipline”. SWOT and SMART analysis really help us to identify the plan needed to be execute to achieve the goal set.
