Therapeutic Communication In Nursing

Introduction

Effective communication skills are a vital ability for nursing students to master. Nurses will not be able to successfully establish strong patient relationships without this ability. It will also be harder for students to hold functional conversations with patients. In psychiatric nursing units, communication and understanding is a core quality to have. However, therapeutic communication teachings are not readily accessible for students. Limitations such as patient refusals, decreased length of stay, and the severity of mental illnesses decrease patient contact. Consequently, it is rare for nursing students to have direct interaction with patients, hindering the growth of their communication skills.

Current Methods of Teaching Therapeutic Communication

Currently, there is an insufficient amount of literature available for therapeutic communication. Therefore, it is common for faculty to pass down their knowledge from their own nursing education onto their students. Instructors utilize interpersonal

In order to achieve this, a study was done to determine how effective standardized patients were in a psychiatric clinical setting. A convenience sample was taken by collecting 89 senior nursing students that voluntarily participated ranging from ages 20 to 60. All of the participants were enrolled in the psychiatric nursing clinical course. The standardized patients were collected from theater majors at the university, a local acting group, and retired nurses. Nursing faculty with a minimum of 20 years of experience wrote the scripts for the standardized patients. The standardized patients rehearse and trained with the experienced nurses to simulate a patient with one of the following mental illnesses: depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and post-traumatic stress