MBTI Careers - Be and Do What You Are

Values in health care: a spiritual approach

The spirituality component of holistic health is difficult to define, qualify, and quantify; and how does one practise “spirituality” in health care? To help answer these issues, a group of healthcare professionals has developed a programme that aims to address these issues.

Consultant psychiatrist and programme director Sarah Eagger explains, “A group of us started meeting together in 2000 to explore how a spiritual dimension of whole person medicine could be integrated into the current healthcare system. We explored how best to help others and ourselves identify and apply core values in health care.” Four years of effort has culminated in the launch of “Values in Healthcare: a Spiritual Approach”—a spiritual development programme for all healthcare disciplines.

Core values

Values can be described as our core beliefs or the principles by which we live, or how we aspire to live. Who has inspired you and influenced your life and work? What values or qualities did they demonstrate? Compassion, kindness, practicality, dependability, integrity, humour, and honesty may be some of them. The BMA has identified a number of doctors’ core values, including: “competence, integrity, confidentiality, caring, compassion, commitment, responsibility, advocacy, and a spirit of enquiry.”[6]

Values affect how we live and work. One cause of NHS stress is when we are unable to honour values because of constraints or demands. For example, if you value listening to people but do not have the time to listen in the way you would like, or if you value family time but find your workload is too great to allow the time or energy you need. The Values in Healthcare programme aims to help healthcare workers identify their values and develop ways of reflecting them in their professional and personal lives.

Experiential, supportive, and inclusive

“Spiritual skills don’t necessarily come automatically,” explains Sarah Eagger. “So we decided we would detail a series of workshops in the programme, with the aim of “experiential” learning. Values in Healthcare focuses on the provision of spiritual tools, such as visualisation, appreciation, meditation, listening, reflection, creativity, and play.”

An underlying principle of the programme is “physician heal thyself.” General practitioner and programme contributor, Craig Brown, explains, “By supporting and helping healthcare professionals enhance their spiritual health, patient care naturally improves.” As well as addressing personal values like peace and compassion, the programme aims to equip healthcare workers with skills relevant for the workplace including cooperation, listening, respect, calmness, and humour.

Although focused on spirituality, the programme has not been directed at any particular “religion.” Sarah Eagger says, “We’ve kept the whole spirituality extremely broad so that it will appeal across the board. People from different religions have looked at it and found it inclusive.”

What’s the verdict?

The programme has received input from a variety of individuals drawn from healthcare professions and settings worldwide. A recent pilot involving a small number of healthcare workers in the United Kingdom showed a self reported reduction in stress and anxiety and improved self worth and wellbeing following the programme.

Compassion versus targets

A lack of whole person health care and spirituality may have contributed to some current healthcare problems. Certainly, this idea is supported by increasing numbers of patients using complementary therapy. Professor David Peters thinks it’s affecting healthcare professionals too: “Compassion and imagination are too often forced to give way to targets and performance measures. So doctors and nurses are losing the confidence they once had that they made a difference to their patients. Some are even leaving the professions.”

As with all aspects of medicine, when it comes to whole person medicine and “spiritual health,” we must seek, explore, and carefully examine the evidence. Spiritual health is difficult to measure but we could all benefit from taking a moment to reflect on values that drew us to, and continue to keep us in, medicine. Whatever values you hold, make sure they are your own. As for me, I’ve always found the principle of do as you would be done by a good place to start.

Full article: Whole Person Healthcare

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: An Interpersonal Tool for System Administrators (download the paper)

Betty Jacob
Nancy Shoemaker

Abstract: Tools to automate, improve, and provide insights into the technical environment of system administrators are widely available. This paper focuses, in contrast, on a tool to improve the interpersonal environment within which system administrators work.  SA’s often become focal points for interpersonal communications, and they need to handle this aspect of their jobs well in order to fully realize technical success.  This paper presents a tool which is widely used but which may not have been
introduced to many system administrators.
 
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator describes interpersonal differences and provides a framework for problem solving and conflict resolution.  This paper introduces the four dimensions of the MBTI, provides information on likely patterns of types represented by SA’s and contrasts this with managers and users.  We illustrate the four dimensions of the MBTI with applications from system administration.  We provide some discussion of the limitations of the MBTI, and give practical examples of
its use in an SA setting.

An Analysis of Computing Major Students’ MBTI Distribution (pdf):

Most common types in the computing sciences? ISTJ and ESTJ.
Least common? INFJ

From Clues on Software Engineers’ Learning Styles (free pdf research download)

Abstract: from

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) has proved to be a useful instrument for understanding student learning preferences and has enable comparisons of the learning preferences for various personality types. Regarding learning styles, there is no one best combination of characteristics, since each preference has its own advantages and disadvantages.

Therefore, it is a fallacy to think that professors can devise a single teaching technique that would always appeal to all the students at the same time. The ideas presented in this paper have been taken into account in two 4-year courses, named Software Requirements and Software Design in which the students develop their capstone projects. The results of this investigation may help college instructors to understanding the preferred leaning style of software engineers.

Keywords: Software Engineering, Human Factors in Software Engineering, Software Engineering Education, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, MBTI. 

Excerpt:

All of us have something to learn and to teach. Adjusting instruction to accommodate the learning styles of different types of students can increase both achievement and the enjoyment of learning. Kalsbeek [5] stated that “learning can be understood as a
person’s preferred approach to information processing, idea formation, and decision making; the attitude and interests that influence what is intended to in a learning situation; and a disposition to seek learning environments compatible with these personal profiles.”
The match or mismatch between the way that professors teach and the way that students learn may have important ramifications for levels of satisfaction and retention of students and teachers.

The MBTI is neither a measure of teaching performance nor learning competence, it is only an indicator of preferences. As a rule of thumb MBTI provides insights for effective
teaching and learning, and it can be usefully employed as a guide for understanding learning styles and improving teaching skills. It is this well-researched view of type theory that we would like to apply to our discussion of teaching and learning styles of engineering students [2].

In a paper presented at AusAPT’s 5th National Conference, Ian Ball noted a highly significant directional difference on the T-F dichotomy between males and females, in both US and Australian MBTI data.  Here Ian takes a closer look at gender differences in the distribution of types in Australia (pdf download of research paper).

Here’s a paper on MBTI personality type instruction preferences. Excerpt:

“A study of student personality types showed surprising preferences for the medium of instruction”

‘Our study sought to determine if different personality types express more or less satisfaction with courses delivered online versus those delivered in the classroom.  Evaluation of personality type and course satisfaction data indicated that certain personality types preferred online rather than in-class courses.  More extraverted students and those who were more sensitive than intuitive preferred the way the information was presented, and they way they were evaluated, in online courses.’