Pre-requisites for person centred care: Reflective paper

CNA340: Developing professional nursing practice Semester Two 2019
Pre-requisites for person centred care: Reflective paper
Please note: The sections shaded grey are for your information only and can be deleted for
final submission. You are only required to type into the white sections. Word counts are
suggested (please delete these instructions for final submission).
Brief overview of situation/clinical encounterProvide a succinct overview with adequate information in which to contextualise the pre-
requisite being discussed (150 words).
In order to complete my PEP, I was working in the medical ward of Canterbury hospital, Australia. My
placement was for 6 weeks. During that time period, I got in touch with many patients and heard their
stories of sufferings and past trauma. I saw patients coming with their problems and diseases. I saw
different types of patients with different types of diseases. One thing which was common between all
patients was their mood. Everyone seemed to be tensed. I had to take care of different types of patients
throughout my shift. Once, I saw a young patient who came with an injury which was happened by
accident. He was crying and totally depressed. When I talked to him, he stated how the accident happened
and how he got frightened. I had also seen a patient with kidney problem who was always thinking that he
would die soon. These experiences really helped me to understand patient demographics.
Identify relevant pre-requisite/sYour encounter identifies several pre-requisites that impacted/contributed to the clinical
encounter. Please list these below in dot points (not included in word count).
 Self-learning from experience
 Developing communication and interpersonal skills
 Practising Empathy for better understanding of the patients’ pain.
Identify and discuss ONE priority pre-requisiteRelate this to the literature on person-centred practice and outcomes, highlighting its
importance as an attribute for health professionals and how this should be demonstrated
with reference to the Registered Nurse Standards for Practice (2016) (300 words).
The one pre-requisite on which I want to concentrate on this article is ‘Developing communication and
interpersonal skills’. Interpersonal communication skill requires a set of abilities to be practised with.
Active listening, flexibility, patience, understanding the situation of the patient, these are some of them. In
order to build effective communication and deliver safe, culturally appropriate, and quality care to the
patients, a nurse must need to own an advanced level of interpersonal and cross-cultural communication
skills (Boykins and Carter, 2012). Good Interpersonal communication skill can result in better patient
outcomes, and that is why it is one key ingredient in person-centred care (Kitson et al., 2012). A nurse
with good interpersonal skill must be assertive and responsive to her patients. When a nurse is responsive,
it expresses her genuine interest to the patient, which makes the patient share more with the nurse. And
being assertive, the nurse can make the patient trust her. These qualities help the nurse to understand her
patient and the problem of the patient properly (Crisp et al., 2016). I truly think that I am equipped with
these skills to some extent. Maybe that is why a lot of patients shared their past stories with me. Those
involvements with patients were two way beneficial. Patients used to feel less-stressed sharing their
stories with me. On the other side, those stories helped me to understand the physical situations of the
patients, and to provide better treatment for them. As per the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia
(NMBA), effective communication with an excellent interpersonal skill is a vital aspect of Registered
Nurse Standards for Practice. Standard 2.4 of Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia (NMBA) outline
‘provides support and directs people to resources to optimise health-related decisions’, which co-relates
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