Therapeutic Nurse Client Relationship Analysis

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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 …show more content…

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 …show more content…

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

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