Effective Nurse-Patient Communication: A Case Study

This assignment explores a case study on effective nurse-patient communication and its importance in promoting therapeutic relationships and patient safety. The case scenario involves a patient seeking health assessment and wanting to improve their lifestyle. The nurse must provide person-centered care and incorporate the patient in decision-making. Effective verbal and nonverbal communication, as well as documentation, are crucial components of safe practice. The paper emphasizes the need for clear, inclusive, timely, and accurate communication with patients.

Running head: CASE STUDY
Case study
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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CASE STUDY
The communication between the nurses and the patient is very crucial in establishing a
good therapeutic relationship and also for maintaining the safety of the patient not only with
respect to safety of health but also with respect to the psychological and cultural safety.
Communication is the two way interaction where sharing of different information, feelings and
meanings occur both verbally and non-verbally (Norouzinia et al., 2016). According to the health
professionals, effective communications involve providing the patients with clear information
within a proper time but he patients expect to be communicated in a manner that must be
inclusive, appropriate, timely and accurate. Effective communication in patient centered care,
verbal communication and non-communication and documentation is important in nursing for
developing healthy therapeutic relationship. In this assignment, an effective nurse-patient
communication has been described by taking the example as the given case scenario 1.
In the given case, George Pham, the patient, has come for an assessment of health to a
registered nurse. George has come for the health assessment with some minor health problems
and he wants to improve his wealth by changing his diet and also by changing his life style. Thus
the nurse must provide person centred care to promote the wellbeing of the patient. In order to
promote person centred care to the patients, nurses would require a clear therapeutic
communication along with the incorporation of the patient in the decision making. In the
professional discipline of nurses and midwives, they are defined as their application of the
person-centred holistic care with the assistance of the evidence-based practice. As discussed by
Coyne, Holmström and Söderbäck (2018), there are eight values of the person-centred care such
as respect for the preferences, physical and emotional support, and the involvement of family
members, access to the care, coordination, and integration of care and information and education

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which further ensure the safety of the patient. Taking an insight into the situation, George has a
stressful lifestyle with work and caring for daughter and wants to eat healthily. In this case, a
nurse must incorporate George in the process of patient-centred care where nurse should provide
education and information regarding health issues so that George feel empowered and
comfortable because of the transparency of the nurses and access to the care (Kogan, Wilber &
Mosqueda, 2016). It is the core value of the nurses is to respect the autonomy of the patient
which should be incorporated in the practice. The nurse would prioritize the decision of the
patient for the treatment procedure. Since George required assistance in changing the lifestyle
and eating healthy to cope up with stressful life, it is the responsibility of nurses to provide
emotional and physical support. In the current context, the nurse must provide physical and
emotional support by prioritizing decision, involving him in the strategy of lifestyle
improvement which includes amending his diet by removing the high carb and lipid foods
(Glew, 2017). The collaboration with the nurse will George to feel safe, empowered and
comfortable (Doherty & Thompson, 2014).
Considering the person centred care, effective verbal and nonverbal communication is
crucial component which ensure safe practice. For a successful communication to be done, three
things are needed the sender of the message, the message and the receiver (Jensen et al., 2015).
For example, in the given case, the nurse is the sender of the message, the receiver is the patient
and the messages should be about how he will improve his health. The purpose of the
communication should be cleared. The purposes of the communication are to inquire, persuade,
inform, request or investigate (Glew, 2017). The nurses tend to communicate with the patients
regarding all therapeutic purposes, so their communications are always purposeful and are also
planned for promoting the patient’s health and well-being (Glew, 2017). In the given case

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scenario, the nurse will make the patient understand clearly about the foods that he will need for
maintain a healthy body and she will also make him understand about the care plan that she will
prepare for him. The verbal and the non-verbal communications are the main two types of
communications used by human beings (Mehrabian,2017). The verbal communication involves
the spoken words and is very important in the context of healthcare sector (Levett-Jones, 2014).
The different members of the healthcare team communicate among each other and also with the
patient verbally (Mavridis, 2015). For example, in the given case scenario, while asking about
the medical history of George, the nurse has to communicate verbally with the patient. She will
talk politely with him and discuss about his present clinical symptoms and the medicines he need
to take for maintaining his health. The non-verbal communication does not involve words (Foley
& Christensen, 2016). The communication is done by the body language. This can be either very
effective or can create a wrong impression at the same time . This type of communication
involves accent, bodily contact, emotions in the tone of the speech, facial movements and
gestures, posture, physical appearance, errors in speech and the speech timing (Machiels et al.,
2017). In the given case study, the patient may hide something from her regarding his health
issues but the nurse should understand everything by noticing the gestures and the body postures
of the patient.
As discussed before effective communication is critical to promote therapeutic nurse and
patient relationship and patient safety. Another component of the safe practice is effective
documentation which is another form of communication. Documentation in the clinical practice
is evidence which allows monitoring the patient for improvement and reduces ethical issues
(Nakate et al., 2015). In the current context, the nurse must conduct effective documentation
involving background information of George, history, assessment and treatment process. It

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encourages a nurse to access client progress and determine the best effective practice (Kerr et al.,
2016). It will further increase the safety of George and he will receive the high quality of person-
centred care.
Thus it can be concluded that effective communications providing the patients with clear
information within a proper time but he patients expect to be communicated in a manner that
must be inclusive, appropriate, timely and accurate. The paper explored a case study where the
patient required extensive support from nurses. In the current context, nurses are required to
provide person-centred care with the assurance of effective verbal and nonverbal communication
and effective documentation.

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References:
Coyne, I., Holmström, I., & Söderbäck, M. (2018). Centeredness in Healthcare: A Concept
Synthesis of Family-centered Care, Person-centered Care and Child-centered
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