High emotion in the workplace: Session 1

Strategies for dealing with high emotion in the workplace – Session 1

SMACC Sim Team; Claire Richmond

This is the first in a five part series of short talks on managing emotion in the workplace. Emotions create a cognitive load and impact on learning. We all need to debrief. In this introduction Jon, Renee and Clare will guide us through our reactions phase, an essential component of debriefing, whether after real or simulated complex emotional events. This is where we deal with emotions to improve learning. We need to go there, whether we are facilitating the discussion or another member of the team.

Jon, Renee and Clare will give you some simple tools to help you facilitate and participate in the reactions phase of a post-event debrief. We need to recognise emotional red flags, and explore those emotions, so that we can begin to understand how they affect our thoughts and behaviours. Naming the emotion helps us to move from raw feelings into the cognitive domain. As a facilitator, we can help by normalising emotions, offering empathy, coaching and support.

• Session 1: SMACC Sim Team; Claire Richmond
• Session 2: SMACC Sim Team; Chris Hicks, Jesse Spurr
• Session 3: SMACC SIM Team; Jenny Rudolph
• Session 4: SMACC Sim Team; Jessica Stokes-Parish, Renee Lim, Claire Richmond
• Session 5: SMACC Sim Team; Chris Nickson

The presentation

The Podcast

Dr Claire Richmond is an emergency physician and prehospital and retrieval medicine specialist working in Sydney, NSW. She is the director of training at Sydney HEMS and still returns to the Sydney Clinical Skills and Simulation centre to keep involved in the sim world. Her involvement in SMACC started with handing Simon Carley a large snake in Sydney and has continued through simulation and SMACCForce where we’ve pushed the boundaries of simulation in conferences. Outside of work she spends her time with her dog, Archie or practising and studying yoga.