Case Study Analysis of Kirra

This assignment highlights important aspects of the case study of Kirra and selects counselling and communication strategies that would enable her to achieve both mental and emotional stabilities required for ensuring quality life. Read on to learn more.

Running head: CASE STUDY ANALYSIS OF KIRRA
CASE STUDY ANALYSIS OF KIRRA
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CASE STUDY ANALYSIS OF KIRRA
Effective communication is considered a significant foundation on which counselling
profession is based. It actually helps in laying the paths, through which clients when treated,
are able to overcome challenges and live high quality lives (Boniolo & Sanchini, 2016). This
assignment would highlight important aspects of the case study of Kirra. It would select
counselling and communication strategies that would enable her to achieve both mental and
emotional stabilities required for ensuring quality life.
Rapport can be explained as the harmonious relationship that can be developed
between individuals while they try to accept and understand ideas and feelings about each
other. Gabble and Herrman (2015) states that it is significant for every counsellor in making
their clients feel comfortable and safe in their presence. It has been found that when clients
lack the feeling of safety and comfort in the presence of the counsellor, then the individual
would be hesitant in revealing and disclosing important information to the counsellor. The
counsellor can follow a number of procedures for establishing rapport with Kirra. It is
important for every counsellor to develop an idea about the critical issues that a client is
facing and therefore, he needs to be prepared beforehand, as this would contribute in
smoother initiation of conversation. Hence, the counsellor attending Kirra should take
preparations and raid all the notes of the GP before he begins the sessions. The second
procedure would be to listen to Kirra actively and patiently without any judgemental
approaches. Studies are of the opinion that active listening capabilities without exhibiting any
judgemental behaviour enable the patient to feel that the professional wants to know about
them in details and that they are not judging them (Krabbenborg et al., 2016). This would
help Kirra in developing trust and liking on the counsellor enabling a trustworthy relationship
between them. The third procedure of development of rapport would be to exhibit empathy
and compassion. The counsellor, with the help of empathy, can thereby exhibit that they
genuinely care for the patients’ well being and that they can feel the suffering that the patient

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CASE STUDY ANALYSIS OF KIRRA
is going through. Studies have found that this actually helps in enhancing the trust as well as
mutual respect thereby resulting in the development of emotional bond. This would make
Kirra reveal every important detail about her life and would enable her adherence to the
interventions set by the counsellors (Midwinter & Dickson, 2015).
Studies have found that counselling younger adults crossing teenage hood can vary
with adults of middle age of old age (Nelson-Jones, 2015). Young adults who have just
crosses adulthood are seen to be easily affected by negative remarks, feel confused about
taking any decisions, reaches conclusion too quickly, and feel judged or discriminated even
on positive criticism, exhibits intolerance or strong voice, which are rarely exhibited by older
adults. Kirra is of 20 years of age who have just crossed her teenage-hood and therefore, she
still might be vulnerable to the above behavioural issues. The most important communication
procedure that would be used is “attending” where the counsellors need to be actually “with”
the client not only physically but also mentally, emotionally as well as spiritually. For this,
the professional can adopt the SOLER approach. This approach would help the professionals
to exhibit their inner attitudes and also genuineness and respect to the clients. The counsellor
attending Kirra should “Squarely” face her, maintain an “open” posture, “leaning” towards
her, maintain “eye” contact, and try to be “relaxed as well as natural” with her (Papayianni &
Cooper, 2018). The second communication strategies would be “probing” or “questioning”
which means that the counsellor should include statements and questions that would help the
client to explore more fully on the relevant issues. The counsellor attending Kirra would try
the probing strategy in the form of statements, single words as well as phrases and non-verbal
prompts and request, questions. This step would help counsellor in understanding why Kirra
has low mood as well as eating disorders and this would enable the professional to learn
about the life stressors of Kirra that are making such situations. The third communication
strategy that the counsellor can use for Kirra is “summarizing”. Studies have found that when

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CASE STUDY ANALYSIS OF KIRRA
professionals undertake the process of summarizing, they can understand the different aspects
that are said in the sessions and this would mainly help in providing focus on the aspects,
which were previously discussed with clients and also challenging the client in moving
forward (Hodgson et al., 2016). When the counsellor would begin the session with Kirra, he
should first provide the summary of the points to her if she does understand where to start.
This would prevent Kirra to repeat what is already discussed. It has been found that when the
sessions go nowhere, summaries can help counsellors in focusing on the client and when
Kirra would be stuck, summarising can help the client in moving forward and investigating
other parts of the story.
A barrier that can affect the communication procedure would be the lack or absence
of enthusiasm for complete participation of Kirra and incomplete revelation of significant
information about her own self. It is indeed important for all service users to speak up about
the different various life stressors and mental and physical issues, different challenges faced
by her and others. () is of the opinion that when a service user shows reluctance to the
procedure of counselling, it might become difficult as well as challenging for the counsellor
to carry on with the procedure of communication. The other barrier that can be also stated
here is the socio-cultural barrier. Kirra can be found to be highly inclined towards her father
and this can be well evidenced from her excessive concern about the development of drinking
habit of her father. This liking for her father can imply that she would be highly associated
with the cultural traditions and customs followed by her father who belongs to aboriginal
origin. Hence, if the counsellor cannot communicate with Kirra in a culturally competent
manner that is expected by every people with aboriginal background, it might affect the
morale and self-respect of the client and her cooperation in the procedure might is ceased. As
mentioned before, Kirra is only 20 years old and she has just crossed adolescence. Studies
opine that this age can be characterised by a number of behavioural issues like increased

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resistance, being highly anxious, being defensive, highly judgmental or embarrassed shy or
with strong and various types of inflexible sense of beliefs. All these might create barriers
when counsellor would try to communicate with Kirra. This might also prevent the client
from exploration of different perspectives of the solutions and problems (Lekka et al., 2015).
The counsellor should take the ethical consideration of autonomy and dignity. This
ethical principle guides every healthcare organisation to respect the preferences and the
wishes of every service users and thereby develop their care plans with all interventions that
align with the expressed needs and wishes of the service users and their families (Beddoe,
2016). In the case study, it is found that Kirra is reluctant in seeking any treatment from any
professionals and in such area, if the professional forces her to accept any forms of treatment,
it might lead to breaching of the ethical principle of autonomy and dignity. However, the
professional might face ethical dilemma is such situation where the ethical principles of
autonomy and dignity might interact with the ethical principle of beneficence (Wosket,
2016). This principle suggests professionals to provide best treatments and interventions that
would do “good” to the patient, that is help her to develop her health conditions and live
better quality life. Here, the professional needs to involve Kirra in an evidence-based care
plan to help her develop her mental and physical health but this would again interact with her
will of not participating in her care. Hence, professional might suffer from ethical dilemma
between choosing beneficence and autonomy-dignity. To overcome this, the counsellor
would try to develop rapport with patient and gain her trust thereby encouraging her in ways
where she does not feel pressurised. Then professional can encourage Kirra in ways by which
she does not feel pressurised. If Kirra is ready in changing her decisions after this, the
counsellors can include her in treatment planning process.
A number of healthcare professionals can be referred in case of Kirra to provide her
with holistic care and help her to live better quality life. One of such professional who would

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CASE STUDY ANALYSIS OF KIRRA
be included in Kirra’s care is the dietician. The patient is seen to face issues with her appetite
where she no longer feels like eating and in such situation; the dietician can help her
overcoming such eating disorder in the patient and help her develop her appetite. As she is
not eating properly, she is facing reduction in her weight and in order to overcome such
situation, the dietician would be setting up food chart for Kirra according to her age and body
requirements. This would enable her to maintain appropriate weight and live healthy lives
with better developed immunity systems (Morissey, 2015). Another important healthcare
professional who can help in this context is the psychotherapist. These healthcare experts can
be helpful as they initiate talk therapies like that of cognitive behavioural therapies, family-
centred therapies as well as interpersonal therapies. These therapies are found to be beneficial
in handling different mental health ailments like depression, anxiety and many other
disorders. Another healthcare professional who can be taken into consideration is the
community nursing professional. Kirra had been exposed to different life stressors, which had
resulted in mental, emotional and physical stabilities. Here, the nursing professionals would
be taking up the bio-psycho-social model for providing a comprehensive as well as holistic
care to Kirra. Each of the healthcare professionals attending Kirra should maintain her
confidentiality as well as privacy of all the information shared by her and they should not
discuss such information of the patient unless Kirra provide the permission to them to do so.
The challenges that the members of the team might face are the power struggles, lack of
ineffective communication, lack of compatibility among the members, hierarchical
communication, matching of timings to meet for feedback sharing sessions and others (Tribe,
2015).
From the above discussion, it has been found that counsellors need to develop rapport
and proper communication strategies to initiate the counselling sessions for the patients. This
would help in developing strong bonds with service users and thereby developing good

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CASE STUDY ANALYSIS OF KIRRA
understanding about them. The counsellor should consider take ethical considerations like
beneficence, autonomy and dignity while counselling the patients. He would be needing to
work with other healthcare experts to ensure all the important needs of the patient named
Kirra.

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CASE STUDY ANALYSIS OF KIRRA
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CASE STUDY ANALYSIS OF KIRRA
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