Professional Nursing Perspectives on Communication

Question: Describe about the Professional Nursing for Perspectives on Communication. Answer: Nurses need to build a strong therapeutic relationship with their clients to deliver patient-centered care (Cunico et al., 2012). Nurses need to ensure secure and efficient communication when dealing with the patient as it is recognized as a cornerstone of safe and effective therapeutic relationships. A patient requires an environment that is rich in confidentiality, trust, safety, empathy, understanding and respect. The communication skills, which are essential for a therapeutic relationship, are respect, reflective listening, sensitivity, self-awareness, and empathy. The essay discusses these skills for a therapeutic relationship in subsequent sections and ones, which are essential to meet the NMBA (Nursing and Midwifery Association) RN (registered nurse) standards for practice related to engagement in therapeutic and professional relationships (2016). Nurses need communication skills not only for the patient but also when dealing with other colleagues and health professionals to f oster the culture of safety and learning, share knowledge and practice that promotes patient-centered care (Glass, 2010). The essay ends with the conclusion containing integrated overview of the discussion. Nurses must maintain patients respect and dignity of the patient, which is the central concept in nursing. Respect can be defined as realizing the worth, dignity, and uniqueness of a person irrespective of personal attributes, nature of the illness and the socioeconomic status (Harvey Koteyko, 2012). Respect refers to the position or a quality of being esteemed. Respect in nursing profession demands engagement and is concerned with value. The nurse needs to treat the patient with worth, value and respect their culture, rights, and beliefs (Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia, 2016). According to Glass, (2010) respect is an action to be performed and not merely an emotion and is a way to show compassion to the patients for their healing during their struggle with illness. The responsibility of upholding the standards of care rests on the nurses; therefore "humanity, respect and dignity" should be the foundations of the nursing practice (Rooke, 2014). Respecting patient leads to the positive impact on patients health as it uplifts their self-esteem and confidence. This strengthens the therapeutic relationship between the nurse and the patient. These components help in promoting mental health and preventing mental illness. It helps to understand clients aspirations in life, priorities, limits, abilities, and needs. Therefore, nurses can respond accordingly to comfort and relieve the suffering of the patients. This induces the patients and colleagues to respond positively to such positive attitude and reignite confidence to recover (Henry et al., 2015). Reflective listening is the communication skill where the listener focuses on the conversation minimizing any possible distraction (Bulman Schutz, 2013). The communication strategy that involves listening to the speakers idea and offering back the same idea to confirm if it was well understood by the listener is called as reflective listening. It is a method used by nurses to embrace the perspective of the clients without being judgmental. Repetition, paraphrasing and summarizing are the element applied when the reflective listening is practiced. Reflective listening is also essential when communicative with other health professionals and colleagues to develop strong collaboration. According to the second NMBA standard of "therapeutic and professional relationship," nurses need to understand the fact that all the patients have different lived experiences in their life due to diseases (Griffith Tengnah, 2014). In therapeutic setting reflective listening has been found to play a positive role. Reflective listening also encourages the nurse-patient relationship to be more open and active. Better the therapeutic relationship the more is the disclosure of the feelings (Barbosa et al., 2013). It is encouraging to patients when they know that the medical practitioner is listening to them and it allows speaking clearly and concisely. This further improves the cognitive content, which better helps in problem solving with patient by effective counseling (Fedoruk Hofmeyer, 2012). The patient feels accepted without any reasonable judgments. The patient is encouraged to express their feelings and emotions. Through this, the nurse has an opportunity to identify the patients uncomfortable feelings, the various emotions displayed and prepare to better focus on the clinical situation. Empathy is the communication skill that demonstrates the presence of emotional and intellectual awareness of thoughts, perspectives, behavior and feelings of another person even those that are unpleasant or disturbing (Cunico et al., 2012). Empathy is necessary for nurses to support patients and direct them to resources "to optimize health-related decisions (Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia - Professional standards, 2016). However, nurses must be able to differentiate the boundaries between the personal and professional relationship (Barbosa et al., 2013). In nursing, empathy plays an essential role by helping the patient feel understood and accepted strengthening the therapeutic relationship. Empathy improves the coping skills of the patient as they respond positively on being accepted and respond accordingly to the nurses efforts. Patients treated by empathic nurse progresses in treatment faster than those who do not get the same service (Moss, 2015). Through clinical empathy, a nurse can understand the needs, situation of the patient, their feeling, and perspectives. Through empathy, the nurse can help people overcome negative experiences by acting on the understanding in a therapeutic manner (Webb, 2011). Sensitivity is the ability or the quality to understand the concerns of other people (Rooke, 2014). Cultural sensitivity also allows efficient delivery of patient care by understanding the faith, gender, disability, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and race. Nurses must be sensitive to cultures other than their own, such awareness and sensitivity determines better patient outcomes (Mareno Hart, 2014). On the other hand, the prejudice, discrimination, stereotyping, portray the lack of sensitivity and are major barriers to the delivery of culturally competent care. Sensitivity improves the ethical performance of the nurses as well as strengthens the therapeutic relationship between the nurses and the patients. Nurses sensitivity of Patients traumatic experiences, pain and agony had better allow them to meet the care needs and bridge the communication gap with the patients. Sensitivity helps nurses to realize the fears of the patient and the coping skills. Therefore, nurses can respond to the challenging situation without losing connection with others (Hoeve et al., 2014). Lack of sensitivity increases stress among nurses and decreases the ability of problem-solving which in turns also affects their moral sensitivity (Lawrence, Kiernan, 2015). An individual with self-awareness has consciousness knowledge about one's individuality and personality. It is the ability to introspect one's feelings, character, desires, and motives (Sans et al., 2015). This self-awareness is important in the life of a nurse and the therapeutic relationship with the patients. With self-awareness, a nurse can change the thoughts and interpretations made in mind. According to Chambers et al., (2013) self-awareness is the key attribute of emotional intelligence and an essential factor for success. A nurse with high self-awareness is better able to take control of the situation. It is beneficial when communicating with and caring the patient. Before helping patients, nurses should have clarity in thoughts and behavior patterns to understand and empathize facilitating better personal and professional relationships (Mareno Hart, 2014). Nurse with self-awareness can promote problem solving in the patients. Without self-awareness, it is difficult for the nurses to affirm qualities and actions of the patients (Zeller Levin, 2013). There are several communication barriers to develop effective therapeutic relationship. These include shortage of nurses, language barrier, fear, education and experience gaps (Webb, 2011). In hospital, patients visit from diverse cultures and linguistic background. Nurses who are not culturally competent are unable to communicate and develop therapeutic relationship with patients. Shortage of nurses increases physical and emotional stress and job burnout due which nurses fail to meet the care needs of the clients leading to their dissatisfaction and poor patient retention. Further, less experienced or educated nurse finds difficult to understand the medical terminology, concepts which adds to confusion and errors. These communication barriers may lead to misdiagnosis and therefore, communication improvement plans are essential to overcome such barrier. Engaging in reflective practice is an effective method to overcome communication barriers. It helps to identify personal merits and demerits. Further, nurses must develop cultural competency by understanding and respecting the values of other culture. They may undertake training to enhance these skills. In addition, nurses must involve in continuous education and learning process that will eventually develop their knowledge and communication skills (). In conclusion, therapeutic relationship ensures meaningful therapy. Applying the nursing principles to the practice require nurses to be transparent, therapeutic and ethical with the patients and colleagues and discuss any issue of major concern related to a profession with trusted colleague. Self-awareness, empathy, sensitivity, genuineness and reflective listening are essential components to build the effective therapeutic relationship with patients. A nurse demonstrating these communication skills discussed in the essay can win patients trust and promote positive mental health. In professional relationship RNs achieve improved health outcome using delegation, supervision, consultation, coordination and referrals in professional relationships (Rooke, 2014). The NMBA standard also requires nurses to report the notifiable conduct of health professionals, colleagues, and others. Therapeutic relationship with colleagues is essential to foster good career prospects and learn ways to imp rove practice. According to Griffith Tengnah, (2014) it is the nursing principle to help colleagues to prevent the breach of professional boundaries and report any violations to the authority (Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia, 2016). References Barbosa, P., Raymond, G., Zlotnick, C., Wilk, J., Toomey III, R., Mitchell III, J. (2013). Mindfulness-based stress reduction training is associated with greater empathy and reduced anxiety for health care graduate students.Education for Health,26(1), 9. Bulman, C., Schutz, S. (Eds.). (2013).Reflective practice in nursing. John Wiley Sons. Burkhardt, M. A., Nathaniel, A. (2013).Ethics and issues in contemporary nursing. Cengage Learning. Chambers, D., Thompson, S., Narayanasamy, A. (2013). 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