Nursing Therapeutic Communication Skills

In nursing it is essential to have effective communication skills when interviewing a patient. It is important to implement communication strategies and skills, such as interpersonal communication techniques, that are appropriate for patients of all different ages and cultures. Reflection is an important aspect in nursing as it allows for personal development and self-awareness. This written essay is a self-reflection on developing therapeutic communication skills focussing on active listening, close ended questions, and empathy; giving prominence to my strengths and areas that still need development.

Active listening is described as interpreting both the content and the feeling in which the patient is expressing without bias or judgement;

I believe that I made use of this communication technique too much in my interview. Throughout the activity I found myself reading off the patient history form rather than creating a natural conversation to gain information. Although close ended questions are a way to draw out controlled responses (Stewart & Cash, 2013), I don’t think that it is an effective way to attain quality and useful information from the patient. According to Funnell, Koutoukidis & Lawrence (2012), closed questions are not formulated to extort extensive details or gain understanding of the patient’s feelings. This communication skill is one that I do not need to work on as I believe that I utilised it too much in my interview, I also believe that it not an effective way to create natural conversation with the patient to gain important information. Using open ended questions would be a more effective way to generate a natural conversation with the patient to gain valuable

I expected myself to have a lot of empathy towards my patient, but when the activity began I found myself only caring about getting the information I needed and not understanding what the patient was feeling. As McKenna et al. (2012) outlines, having empathy and a caring nature is a crucial aspect of being an accomplished and professional nurse. Sometimes having a lack of empathy is unintentional and can be mistaken for being cruel or unsympathetic; therefore developing empathy is an ongoing learning process (Baughan & Smith, 2013). I think that I unintentionally had a lack of empathy as I was concentrating on getting the data I needed, which caused me to not understand the patient’s needs. Creating an empathetic response produces a comforting and caring environment which develops a healing relationship with the client (Day et al. 2015). I understand that having empathy when interviewing a patient is a necessary aspect in nursing and is a communication technique that I plan to develop as I gain more