Communication Skills in Nursing: Non-Verbal Communication, Active Listening, and Cultural Consideration

This report discusses effective communication skills in nursing, including non-verbal communication, active listening, and communicating with someone who has English as a second language. It covers the importance of touch, eye contact, paraphrasing, and cultural consideration in delivering quality healthcare services.

A patchwork
assignment on
communication skills
in nursing

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Non-verbal communication including eye contact and touch.....................................................3
Active listening skills which include paraphrasing and being attentive.....................................4
Communicating with someone who have English as second language which includes use of
interpreters and cultural consideration........................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
To deliver better and effective healthcare services, there in need to use good
communication within healthcare. Nursing staff should use effective communication as a
communication skill that can help them to interact with patient and understand patient's concern
and their opinion. This can be effective to deliver appropriate health care services for their
improved health. In healthcare services, there is need to ensure that patient should receive the
quality of care services for their improved health. There is need to learn about effective
communication. In this report, there is discussion about non-verbal communication which
include eye contact and touch (Clayton et. al., (2019)). There is also discussion about active
listening skills which includes paraphrasing and being attentive. This report also includes
communicating with someone with English as an additional language which includes cultural
consideration and use of interpreters.
MAIN BODY
Non-verbal communication including eye contact and touch
Non-verbal communication in nursing can be effective which may include facial
expression, silence, close physical proximity and touch. This is the one that can include better
interaction with patient without facilitating listening. This can be helpful to develop intuition,
empathy and presence between patient and nurse. Non-verbal communication can be effective
for nursing staff to communicate with patient and established communication without use of
verbal communication. This can be effective and allow nursing care professionals to deliver
better understanding and delivery of effective care services for their improve health (Leigh et.
al., (2020)).
Eye contact is a very important component of the body language and is also an important
aspect of developing understanding with the other person. Visual communication has the ability
to convey even those messages that cannot be delivered through verbal communication. When
talking specifically of interaction between a patient and a nurse through eye contact can plays an
important role to develop trust on the health care provider. Maintaining eye contact with the
patient helps nurses to build a friendly relationship with the patient which is very important for
efficient health care service delivery. It also gives an impression to the patient that the nurses are
taking care of their health related issues. This can also enable them to feel included in delivery of

their healthcare treatment and services. Through eye contact nurses can building trust in the
patients. Eye contact can even be used to express emotions of empathy, interest and hostility
towards the patient (Marufu et. al., (2021)).
Eye contact is also necessary to maintain the flow of conversation with the patient which is
important for understanding all the aspects of patient illness and providing most relevant care.
Focusing on the patient and maintaining eye contact can even help the health care provider to
read patient's facial expression and to analyse them to interpret it. Certain patients are made
conscious with the eye contact or they get uncomfortable with someone looking at them. So this
is the responsibility of the health professional to analyse the body language of the patient and act
accordingly. Therefore, nurses need to maintain positive and humble eye contact with the
patients.
Non-verbal communication is a way of communication includes facial expressions,
posture, body language, appearance, gestures and eye contact. Non-verbal communication can be
sometimes more powerful than words (Afriyie, (2020)). In the nursing field it is a better way to
communicate with patients and reinforce spoken words. Touch is often the quickest way to
communicate, especially when expressing feelings and emotions. Touch is an instinctive form of
communication through which one can deliver information instantly. In practice of nursing, there
are many activities involved regarding human physical contact like bathing, changing clothes,
provide support during lifting and walking, feeding, washing and dressing etc. When nursing
staff touches a patient to prevent them from endangering themselves is referred as protective
touch. The conceptual structure of physical touch in nursing activities intentionally reflects
caring. Some studies have shown that touch have a calming and relaxing response for patients
both pre and post operative. It reduces anxiety, aids in pain relief, provide moral support and
physical support, promotes sleep and reduces swelling. Touch can be categorized into three main
areas like expressive, instrumental and protective. Nursing health professionals must maintain
appropriate touch boundaries with patients. A type of touch known as expressive touch includes
holding hand of dying patient or placing hand on someone's shoulder to give a feeling of
assurance and enthusiasm. This is probably the most important form of touch to develop a
therapeutic relationship with the patient (King et. al., (2021)).

Active listening skills which include paraphrasing and being attentive
Active listening is highly effective within the delivery of health care services. For proper
communication with someone there is need to keep focus on other words and sentences which
are known as message (Geraghty et. al., (2021)). There is need for proper communication
between patient and nursing staff. To establish proper communication with patient, there is need
to ensure that nursing staff should learn about the active listening. This can help them to pay
attention towards the patient about what they are saying. This can be effective and can allow
interpreting patient shared information more effectively. Nursing staff should use their active
listening skill to interpret patient shared information about their health-related issues. This can
help nursing staff to focus on the patient and their shared information that can be helpful to
deliver quality and effective health care services (Coleman et. al., (2019)). Active listening may
include paraphrasing which is an effective way to ensure that the interpretation of patient
information has been accurate or not. This can help nursing staff to ensure that information
which has provided by the patient has been interpreted in the correct way. This can be effective
and can help them to provide healthcare services accordingly for improving patient health.
In nursing, paraphrasing can play an important role in effective communication. Here,
nursing staff should ensure about the information which has been said by the patient. This can be
helpful and useful to understanding what has said by the patient that can be used to delivery
quality of care services and treatment accordingly. There is need to repeat the information in
different word that can help to avoid confusion and ensure that delivered information has been
interpreted correctly (Curr et. al., (2022)). This can be helpful for patient to get better and quality
care services from the nursing staff. Paraphrasing can play an important role and can be used as a
technique which can help to clarify clients messages. This can use by the nursing staff to refresh
patients comment or question which can help to ensure that nurses has understood and heard
correctly about the patient message. This can be helpful for health care professionals to provide
better and effective services to their patient for their improved health.
Active listening includes being attentive where nurse should include and learn this skill.
This can be highly helpful and effective during delivery of healthcare services to patient. This
can enable them to obtain important medical information (Burns, (2021)). Active listening and
being attentive towards patient message can allow to interpret the health care condition and
ensure that they should deliver quality of care services for patient improved health. In this, being

attentive can be helpful and allowed to understand health-related issue to the patient through
which they are suffering. This can also enable healthcare nursing staff to understand the health
care issue and related reason. This can allow nursing staff to identify proper care and treatment
for patient improved health (Stonehouse, (2021)).
Communicating with someone who have English as second language which includes use of
interpreters and cultural consideration
While delivering proper health care service to the patient, there is need to communicate
with patient effectively which may have different backgrounds. Here, the patient may face
difficulty in communicating with a patient who may have different main language (Mitchell et.
al., (2021)). In such type of situation when a patient have English as an additional language then
there is need to ensure proper interaction with the patient. This can be helpful in effectively
interpret the information that are provided by the patient about their health. This can allow
nursing staff to deliver the quality of healthcare services. Here, nursing staffs need to ensure that
they should communicate effectively with a patient who have English as an additional language
and share information related with a health issue. This should be taken in consideration by
nursing staff in order to communicate with such type of person. There are some of the main
points which may include use of interpreters and cultural consideration (Oliquiano et. al.,
(2021)).
Using of an interpreter can be effective and allow nursing staff members to interpret
diverse backgrounds people languages. This can allow them to effectively understand the
message which has been shared by patient and enable nursing staff to effectively communicate
with them, Here, the interpreter can play an important role and providing better information and
sharing of information between patient and nursing staff. Using of an interpreter can help nursing
professionals and patient to communicate easily. It help nursing staff to provide better and more
effective care services for patient improved health. Using of the interpreter can be effective with
in a healthcare setting (Bifarin et. al., (2021)). Here, nursing staff should effectively
communicate with different cultural people while delivering healthcare services. This can help to
establish better communication between patients and nursing staff. Using of the interpreter can
also help in effectively sharing of message from nursing staff to patient and patient to nursing
staff. This can help to improve the quality of healthcare services which are delivered by nursing
staff for the health issue which is faced by the patient.

Cultural consideration is also effective in the delivery of healthcare services to diverse
people from a different culture (Crowe, (2022)). There is need to ensure about the appropriate
cultural manner should not created any type of misinterpretation of any word or sentence. Here,
nursing staff should communicate effectively by considering culture that can help to
communicate easily and understand their culture easily. This can enable nursing staff to deliver
appropriate health care services that can be helpful and provide positive health outcomes.
Nursing staff should also consider culture where patient should feel comfortable during
communicating in the health care premises. This can be effective and enable patients to receive
proper healthcare services without any conflict. Nursing staff should also consider different
culture where they should ensure that their communication should not hurt any patient sentiment
who are from different cultural (Guandalini et. al., (2021)).
CONCLUSION
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that to deliver better and more effective
healthcare services, there is a need to ensure that nursing staff should effectively communicate
with the patient. In this, there is need to improve communication skill among nursing staff. There
is a need to learn about nonverbal communication which includes touch and eye contact. There is
also need to learn about the active listening skill which includes being attentive and
paraphrasing. Nursing staff should also learn about communicating with someone who has
English as an additional language. It includes cultural consideration and use of interpreters which
can be helpful to provide better communication between patient and nursing staff. This can be
effective to deliver proper and effective health care services to the patient for their improved
health.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Afriyie, D. (2020). Effective communication between nurses and patients: an evolutionary
concept analysis. British Journal of Community Nursing, 25(9), 438-445.
Bifarin, O., & Stonehouse, D. (2021). Autonomy and capacity: the ethical and legal
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Burns, N. (2021). A trainee nursing associate working in the eating disorders day service. British
Journal of Healthcare Assistants, 15(4), 180-185.
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comfortable and difficult discussion topics: Associations among self-perceived
communication effectiveness, nursing stress, life events, and burnout. Patient education
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Coleman, D., & McLaughlin, D. (2019). Using simulated patients as a learning strategy to
support undergraduate nurses to develop patient-teaching skills. British Journal of
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Crowe, R. (2022). Factors contributing to maternal health inequalities for women who are not
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