431 - Emotional Intelligence of the Surgical Technologist

ing grudges is unhealthy and only increases stress, collision of personalities, and tarnish one’s image and performance. An inability to forgive a person after an insult or betrayal will only cause more emotional damage. Choosing forgiveness requires the capacity to move beyond the insult and present emotions. Forgiveness releases you from past emotional wounding expe- riences and helps you focus on what really matters. • Ability to pause and control thinking before speaking. Anoth- er indispensable quality of emotional intelligence is the abil- ity to realize that emotions can trigger impulsive decisions that may lead to speaking out in anger and making things worse. Pausing and reorganizing one’s thoughts before speaking is a titanic endeavor, but emotionally intelligent people recognize the need of self-control, the need to think before acting or speaking, and conveying respect through using an appropriate tone of voice. • Enjoy a happier life. One thing is for certain – After a long day of work in the operating room, satisfactions and frus- trations collected from the day’s work will not only impact one’s work performance, but also affect one’s personal lives and interactions within his or her environment. Szczygiel & Mikolajczak (2017) correlated emotional intelligence to life satisfaction and happiness. Their analyses indicated that people with high emotional intelligent traits tend to inten- tionally avoid feeling dampened when dealing with frustra- tion or discouragement, and instead they choose to imple- ment positive strategies to change situations by focusing on events that really matter and bring happiness and satisfac- tion to their lives based on their own personal gains. C O N C L U S I O N Typically, operating room personnel have learned to work in col- laboration no matter how dissimilar they might be. But for many reasons, disappointment, resentment and distress can easily arise during tense circumstances. Handling one’s emotions may seem unmanageable at times when in fact, facing this challenge is a matter of choosing to understand and channeling one’s feelings and motives to construct positive outcomes. In an era of indiffer- ence and self-sufficiency, where rapid social and media changes are the norm, people frequently feel disconnected from other people’s needs and feelings. Yet, those who embrace emotional intelligence as part of their routine behavior become more effective team players, have healthier relationships among colleagues, and create group syner- gy. Imagine a surgical team that cares not only about the patient, but each other at a personal and professional level. These types of teams are more likely to succeed than those who compete against each other. The cohesiveness of the team has a profound influence on the relationship of all its members and it is echoed in the excellence of the work they produce. A B O U T T H E A U T H O R Jorge A Zamudio, CST, graduated as a surgical technologist from Bergen Community College in 1995 and has worked as a traveler CST for 18 years. He is currently a surgical technologist program director and works as an assistant professor and direc- tor of the surgical technology program at Kingsborough Community College. He holds a bachelor’s degree in psy- chology and a master’s degree in organizational leadership. He is additionally credentialed as an anger management and conflict resolution, civil mediation and crisis interven- tion specialist. He has additionally completed studies in mental health, human services and addiction counseling in the state of New Jersey. R E F E R E N C E S 1. Borkowski, N. (2005). Organizational behavior in health care. 1st ed, pp. 161-222 Boston,MA, US: Jones and Bartlett Publishers. 2. Dhani, P; Sharma T. (2016). Emotional Intelligence; history, models and measures. J of Sci Technol and Manage. 5(7) ISSN 2394-1537 3. 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