Communication as an Essential Part of Nursing

Question: What is communication and why is it essential part of nursing? Answer: Communication is very important in the career of nursing. Here it can be said that effective communication process can help in achieving a better access to patients and it builds up a better relationship between the patients and the nurses. By communication process the information are exchanged with the people. Nursing is the profession where the communication is more important because they are needed to communicate with the patient, the family of patient, the co-workers of nurses, supervisors, and many others ('tabnner's nursing care', 2015). Here some of the skills in nursing can be identified and discussed. One of the most important skills in nurse is listening. Active listening is one of the communication skills which are used in patient care. Active listening needs thelistenerto comment what they hear to the speaker. Because of the health issues active listening plays major role in nursing profession ('Therapeutic Communication Techniques', 2015). Attending skill is an essential part of communication which means the nurse gives her full attention in the patient. There are several features of attending skills like the nurse should have open posture and availability to the patient, they should involve with the patient, the eye contact between nurse and patient is also very important and the nurse should always try to be relaxed with their patient. There are certain ingredients of therapeutic communication. The key ingredients to therapeutic communication in nursing are sharing hope, active listening, sharing observation s, sharing empathy, focusing, clarifying, silence, providing information, sharing feeling, sharing humor, confrontation, self- disclosure, summarizing, paraphrasing and asking relevant questions. The key features in verbal communication are good interviewing skill, speech related gesture, effective speaking, encourage others and summarizing the major communication part. Communication is not only an essential part of nursing it is an essential part in every aspect. Nursing provides both physical and mental care to the patient and sometimes also to their clients who suffered a loss or who requires mental support. In that respect an effective communication not only helps the patient but also to their families. Nurses are the representative of a health institution and they are the main staff who has to directly communicate to the clients of the organization thus it is effected that effective communication will build a good relationship in between the organization and the clients. Today the concept of leadership has entered into the field of nursing and nurses are provided various training program in order to enhance their skills in leadership. Leadership requires effective communication so as to guide other nurses on what to do, on planning and implementing a strategy for providing enhanced form of healthcare for their clients. One of the most important tools for an effective communication is feedback and without feedback a communication is ineffective. Feedback for a healthcare system is important because without feedback an organization cannot understand where the problem lies and how it can be overcome. In that case only a nurse can avail direct interaction with the clients and understand their needs. Only nursing can avail scope for interaction and collect feedback for from patients on what improvement is needed and what can be considered. Positive body languagecan bedefinedas these nonverbal activities and signs that are communicating concern, passion, andpositive reactions to what some else are saying. Positive body language is very important in health care system because the patient and family of a patient both are dependent on the successful communication between them. There are two types of questioning. Those are closed- ended question and open- ended question. Open questions widen the range for reply since they insist further conversation and amplification. The answer of open question is very long and the answer is more specific than the closed question. The scope of Self expression and confidence of nurses are better in open- ended question. The patient should ask questions to the nurse in very less and more prominent words in the Para- phrasing. Para- phrasing is the one of the key ingredient in therapeutic communication techniques (Health.vic.gov.au, 2015). Sometimes silence of a patient is more important for a patient and their family. The patient party only wants the presence of nurse. There is no need to talk all-time. Specifically in case of critical patient silence is more essential. At that time presence is more important to the patient and their family. Empathy is a complex concept which is communicated to clients by some process. Those are ability to understand the patient's situation, perspective, and feelings, ability to act on that understanding with the patient in a supportive way and capacity to communicate that understanding and check its perfection (Kourkouta Papathanasiou, 2014). There are many boundaries which should not cross in nursing. The nurse crosses the self- disclosures mostly today. There are various types of nurse self-disclosure: accidental deliberate and unavoidable. Deliberate nurse self-disclosure can direct to puzzle patients and may damage patient nurse relationship. Patients can feel loaded by the nurses disclosure (2011-2015, 2015). The communication skill is very important for the conversation between family of patient and the nurse. The purpose of the use of humor in communication is to identify the process to ease a positive and productive learning environment for nurses. Assertive communication is a communication in which the impact of communication based on mutual respect. The style of this communication is diplomatic and effective communication style. It is challenging for a nurse to communicate with a patient in an emergency condition. The nurse should deliver accurate information to the patient and the family of a patient (Researcha rchive.vuw.ac.nz, 2015). It is the way of restricting the negative out comes and increasing positive outcomes. By conflict resolution a patient and doctor together can find a pleasant solution (Nursingcenter.com, 2015). In conclusion it can be said that the contributing factors to nursing errors are equipment injuries, documenting errors and medication errors. The documentation is very important in career of nursing. Because of any wrong documentation the patient may suffer. The role of nurse is very crucial because it is related to our health (Nursetogether.com, 2011). The patient is able to discuss the event publicly in open disclosure process. According to open disclosure if a harmful event is happened while the patient was receiving health care, the nurse should inform the patient or the family of patient. References 2011-2015, (. (2015).Verbal Communication Skills | SkillsYouNeed.Skillsyouneed.com. Retrieved 16 March 2015, from https://www.skillsyouneed.com/ips/verbal-communication.html Health.vic.gov.au,. (2015).Open disclosure framework: Clinical risk management - Department of Health, Victoria, Australia. Retrieved 16 March 2015, from https://health.vic.gov.au/clinrisk/opendisc.htm Kourkouta, L., Papathanasiou, I. (2014). Communication in Nursing Practice.Materia Socio Medica,26(1), 65. doi:10.5455/msm.2014.26.65-67 Nursetogether.com,. (2011).The Importance of Empathy in Nursing | Nurse Articles | NurseTogether.com. Retrieved 16 March 2015, from https://www.nursetogether.com/the-importance-of-empathy-in-nursing Nursingcenter.com,. (2015).The Power of Silence. Retrieved 16 March 2015, from https://www.nursingcenter.com/lnc/JournalArticle?Article_ID=685836 Researcharchive.vuw.ac.nz,. (2015).Nurse Talk: Features of effective verbal communication used by expert District Nurses. Retrieved 16 March 2015, from https://researcharchive.vuw.ac.nz/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10063/54/thesis.pdf?sequence=2 tabnner's nursing care. (2015). Retrieved 16 March 2015, from https://www.elsevierhealth.com.au/media/anz/samplechapters/9780729541145/Tabbner%27sNursingCare_6e_9780729541145_Koutoukidis_Stainton_Hughson_SampleChapter_lores.pdf Therapeutic Communication Techniques. (2015). Retrieved 16 March 2015, from https://www.snjourney.com/ClinicalInfo/PracticeAreas/Therapeutic_Communication_Techniques.pdf