Therapeutic Communication In Nursing

Patient care is a broad term used that describes the core of what nurses and other health professionals, strive to effectively achieve to create a more successful outcome. According to (Health Navigator NZ,2018) the definition of patient care is, "providing care that is respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs, and values and ensuring that patient values guide all clinical decisions.” Therefore this explains the more commonly forgotten aspects of patient care that are the emotional, spiritual and cultural aspects. For patient care to be developed, nursing concepts are used as building blocks in the steps to creating effective patient care. Three of these important nursing concepts are, communication, therapeutic

This information is shown through verbal and non-verbal cues, to be analysed and form observations. An example of which highlights the importance of communication to create effective patient care was in research surrounding Cancer patients. “A patient who remains passive during the interaction does little to convey his or her needs, fears, expectations, beliefs… Health outcomes may be at risk in these situations.” (Epstein RM, Street RL, Jr, 2007) Consequently, this underlines where there can be a collapse in, patient care because of an error and lack of communication. To remedy this asking questions, giving eye contact and listening are forms of communication a nurse can use that can solve this problem. Furthermore, by the nurse reacting and being responsive the patients core values and needs can be identified and acted on. Other professionals argue that communication is ineffective and causes more issues. One researcher said “Communication continues to be cited as a contributing factor in 70% of healthcare mistakes.”(Kohn, 2000; Institute of Medicine, 2003) This researcher provided no evidence regarding thus creating confusion that communication in its entirety is the problem, when its only the improper use. “2,000 lives according to CRICO Strategies research,”(Balzer-Riley, J. 2004) could have been saved in the US if there was the correction of the poor use of communication which occurs. Therefore,

As a result the nurse shall be able to receive more information and an understanding from the patient which will in-turn assist in the continuing care of said patient. An observational study by Dalgaard and Delmar (2008) showed, “Nurses have lost their therapeutic contact with patients… the nurses in the study were too busy ‘doing for’ their patients to ‘be with’ them and developed ‘closed awareness’ of patient appeals and suffering.” This arises the issue of when a therapeutic relationship is not put in place, that a patient withdraws and a nurses insight of their patient diminishes. A thesis written by a New Zealand Philosopher shows evidence that proves that the implementation of the concept of a therapeutic relationship positively effects patient care in mental health. Research participants found that therapeutic relationships were “fundamental to their practice… and to form the basis of their involvement in relationships ranging from facilitative interpersonal care to coercive interventions.”(O'Brien, A.(2000) This informs that this concept gave nurses the skill to adapt this relationship into different scenarios and would help provide a tool to achieve more ‘be with’ than ‘doing for.’ This rapport and trust means that patients feel a sense of comfortably and share otherwise perceived as embarrassing or