NSG 101 Chapter 24 Outline Communication

Communication and Nursing Practice: o Communication is a lifelong learning process. o As a nurse you communicate with patients and families to develop meaningful relationships. Within those relationships you collect relevant assessment data, provide education and counseling and interact during nursing interventions. o Communication is essential when establishing nurse-patient relationships and delivering patient-centered care. • Communication and Interpersonal Relationships: o The following nursing actions reflect caring: ▪ Becoming sensitive and supportive to self and others ▪ Being present and encouraging the expression of positive and negative feelings ▪ Developing healing relationships ▪ Instilling faith and hope ▪ Promoting interpersonal teaching and learning ▪ Providing for nursing care needs in a supportive way ▪ Respecting and allowing for spiritual expression • Developing Communication Skills: o Nurses who develop critical thinking skills make the best communicators. o They form therapeutic relationships to gather relevant and comprehensive information about their patients. o Then they draw on theoretical knowledge about communication and integrate this knowledge with knowledge previously learned through personal clinical experience. o They interpret messages received from others to obtain new information, correct misinformation, promote patient understanding, and plan patient-centered care. o Critical thinking helps nurses overcome perceptual biases or stereotypes that interfere with accurately perceiving and interpreting messages from others. o The nature of the communication process requires you to constantly decide what, when, where, why, and how to convey a message. • Levels of Communication: o Intrapersonal communication is a powerful form of communication that you use as a professional nurse. This level of communication is also called self-talk. ▪ Positive self-talk provides a mental rehearsal for difficult tasks or situations so that you can deal with them more effectively and with increased confidence. ▪ You use intrapersonal communication to develop self-awareness and a positive self-esteem to enhance appropriate self-expression. ▪ Transforming statements from “I’m scared to work with this type of patient” into “This is my opportunity to learn about this patient, and I can ask for help when it’s needed” is an example of positive self-talk. o Small-group communication is the interaction that occurs when a small number of people meet. ▪ This type of communication is usually goal directed and requires an understanding of group dynamics. ▪ Communication in these situations should be organized, concise, and complete. ▪ Good communication skills help each participant better meet a patient’s needs and promote a safer care environment. o Public communication is interaction with an audience. ▪ Nurses often speak with groups of consumers about health-related topics, present scholarly work to colleagues at conferences, or lead classroom discussions with peers or students. ▪ Public communication requires special adaptations in eye contact, gestures, voice inflection, and the use of media materials to communicate messages effectively. ▪ Effective public communication increases audience knowledge about health-related topics, health issues, and other issues important to the nursing profession. o Electronic communication is the use of technology to create ongoing relationships with patients and their health care team. ▪ Secure messaging provides an opportunity for frequent and timely communication with a patient’s physician or nurse via a patient portal. ▪ An electronic portal enables patients to stay engaged and informed, though the empathetic nature of the therapeutic relationship with the health care team may be more challenging.