Therapeutic Nurse Client Relationship Analysis

The application of the therapeutic nurse-client relationship is absolutely essential to providing the appropriate care to clients (College of Nurses of Ontario, 1999, p. 3). The therapeutic nurse client relationship consists of four components; respect, trust, professional intimacy and empathy (College of Nurses of Ontario, 1999, p. 3). Though, I have not been able to establish a nurse-client relationship yet, I have established customer-client relationships. Customers react similarly to clients when respect is established. One experience in particular really helped me make this comparison.

My Experience

During my six hour shift at Goodwill, a rather rude customer approached me. Some merchandise she had given to one of my co-workers to re-price

had not been returned to her. I immediately understood the reason why. We had received many customers requesting that merchandise be re-priced because the price would be missing. However, customers who asked for this often would have been ripped off by the customer themselves beforehand. Customers did this because they believed the new price would be cheaper.
My coworker had not priced the item because they had put it back through the process of price assessment. This procedure was required so customer did not get a cheaper price. But as a result, my co-workers and I would assume that a customer was being dishonest when they asked for a price. As a result, we had a suspicious image of our customers mostly formed by our negative experiences with their dishonesty. As a result, this image affected my treatment of this customer because I assumed she had lied to me.
Expecting an angry answer, I strictly explained the reason she could not get her item. But then I realized that I was predetermining her reaction to me and by extension, her reaction to Goodwill with my attitude. So, I tried a different approach in response and subtly appealed to her that I understood her frustration, but that I would not change my mind. As a result, I received a very surprising response; “You are by far the nicest employee I’ve spoken to today” (personal communication, January, 2015).
What I did right
This response resulted from my interpretation of my customer’s behavior and reacting instead of simply classifying her behavior.

In nursing, the distinction between recognizing and classifying the behavior of a client from a detached perspective and perceiving the meaning of the behavior of a client and acting in relation to that as described by (Dewey 1958 as cited in Carper, 1948) is a distinction nurses need to make in order to develop what Carper (1948) describes as one of the four types of mindsets that nurses need to grasp called; esthetics or the art of nursing.

But how does one achieve this mindset? Carper (1948) answers this as well; empathy. Nurses use empathy to act not as an audience but as a possible contributor. As said earlier, empathy allows for better perception skills. As a result, with good perception skills comes access to more specific information that forms what Copper (2001) calls ‘particular knowledge’ or subjective knowledge obtained by a nurse about an individual client (p. 6). It is knowledge nurse can have access to if they have enough respect for their

client.
How I can improve?
Though this encounter with the customer proved successful, Initially, I assumed the customer was lying and this is a problem I need to overcome.

Buber (as cited in Carper 1948) gives a solution to this called ‘sacrifice of form’ (p. 28). It is a complete change in mindset where you stop using static definitions in exchange for interpretations that can have several ways of being interpreted. By doing this, you stop the habit of using stereotypes as references for your understanding. As a nurse, I need to understand that as Carper (1948) says; “each person is not a fixed entity, but constantly engaged in the process of becoming” (p. 28) and therefore the mindset I maintain, needs to be reflective of this quality of human beings; constantly changing and is a mindset I will strive to create to be able to give respect to my clients when I start developing my therapeutic nurse-client

relationships.