Essay On Long Term Care Communication

I am a Registered Nurse for almost eight years now in a state-run, long-term care Psychiatric facility in Austin. The clients that I serve have intellectual and physical disabilities and psychiatric problems. Communication is very important not only in the field of nursing, but particularly in Psychiatric nursing. The population that I serve comprises mostly of people who could hardly take care of themselves, express what they want or need, and understand the current situation that they are in, so communication is quite challenging. In this job, I have learned to read and understand things what typically “normal” people do not understand. There are many ways and tools that our nurses use to communicate with our clients such as oral, written, sign language, communication boards and machines, gestures, and other specialized communication objects.

Part of my job is not only to communicate or deal with my patients, doctors, other nursing staff, direct care staff, family and guardians, but also with different care teams such as habilitation therapists (OT, PT), pharmacists, dietary department, psychologists, psychiatrists, facility administrators and external care teams as well. Both oral and written form of communication are equally used at my workplace. There’s always a constant communication between healthcare teams and our clients. Our facility upgraded to electronic charting just for over a year now. It made a big difference not only on the effectiveness of communication between care teams, but also it made a huge difference in the speed, accuracy and ease of communication. The most common documents that I compose are emails and reports. Reports are very important in my job since it helps communicate the current status, problems and solution regarding patient