Recently I visited College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, CA to talk about careers for the social good. My wife, Lena Choudhary, JD, MSN, RN who teaches nursing at Montgomery College in Maryland spoke at Santa Monica College (SMC) (March 29, 2019) while I was in Santa Clarita.
Lena Choudhary speaking at Santa Monica College
The focus of her work is civility in nursing. She helps her students understand how best to deal with difficult situations and conflict in the workplace. For many of her students, their first job will be working in a hospital setting. Today, health care environments are some of the most diverse professional settings. Young nurses often struggle with dealing with expectations placed on them and conflict with more senior nurses.
Bullying is an issue at times. This can affect morale among nurses as well as patient service. A first step to improving relations on the floor is understanding one’s own conflict style. She has her students use the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Assessment to consider their own approach to differences. Her students access it through the U.S. Institute of Peace site. She had the students at SMC determine their conflict style. She has published recently on civility in nursing in the professional journal Nursing2019.
During the presentation, she showed a video that she co-developed at Montgomery College on civility and asked students to consider how they might approach the situation presented.
Conflict is ubiquitous. How we deal with it is important to improving professional outcomes, morale at work, and service to clients and patients. Improving civility be important in enhancing patient services and the all important work of health care.
With nursing students at Santa Monica College
Her visit was sponsored by the International Education Center and Nursing Program at SMC.
If you are interested in her work, she can be reached at lena.choudhary@montgomerycollege.edu.
David J. Smith Consulting, LLC 