Delivering Sensitive Information: A Nurse's Perspective

The assignment highlights the importance of confidentiality, integrity, and effective communication in nursing practice. It emphasizes the need to deliver sensitive information in a proper manner, taking into account the patient's needs and circumstances. The text also touches on the significance of cultural competence and sensitivity when caring for patients from diverse backgrounds. Additionally, it discusses the challenges faced by nurses in caring for patients with dementia, particularly in its late stages, and the importance of early intervention to delay disease progression.

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Assignment
Element of Value Base Care
Student Name:
Student ID:
Course Name:
Course ID:
Faculty Name:
University Name:

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The Nursing practice requires many qualities. It requires specialised skills, knowledge and
honesty, integrity. There are many aspects of nursing practice. It includes the type of client,
different disease management etc. We should treat each patient equally without any
discrimination. This relation is based on mutual respect and trust. It is a helping relationship
in which we should be sensitive to self and others. Providing physical, emotional, spiritual
support to the patient and their family ( Anonson et al 2014).
I believe that care is the fundamental part of the nursing value and it is also my personal
value that I take care of. I feel that it is important to consider a patient as a whole rather than
a particular part of him diseases. My culture has taught me that it is important to understand a
patient’s need and the amount of care it requires because of the suffering (Hoeve et al 2014).
Hence, I have developed the ability to understand the patient’s pain and concern because I
have seen that a non-caring attitude makes the suffering of the patient worse.
With this, I have learnt that caring is the term which should always be associated with
nursing (Larkin, 2013). It has influenced the behaviour in me as a nurse and I have learnt that
it should be holistic and the actions should aim at creating and maintaining an environment
which will support healing. To support the nursing profession I have engaged myself in a
broad range of activities when enacting professional roles.
My seniors have taught me that there should be a deeper understanding of the term care.
There are multiple levels of care. Caring comes with professional experience. It may have a
different meaning for different nurses. The concept of care depends on different factors. But,
for me, it depends on the amount of professional experience, the level of nursing education,
professional values and how and where the nursing skills and concepts are being applied. I
have seen that the caring concept is central to the nursing practice, it requires a great amount
of discipline and dedication to follow, there should be intentional and conscious caring and

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this has brought out the best of the nursing practices from me. I have also learnt and applied
that being a nurse means you have to be fully present in that moment and take proper care of
the patient. It is all about having a trusting, helping and caring relationship with the patient.
This should not be limited to the patient but also should be extended towards the other staff
and most important the caregivers of the patient (Anstey, S., Powell, T., Coles, B., Hale, R.,
& Gould, D. (2016). This has always given me a positive feeling in the patient and the
caregivers. Thus, caring is a very integral part of nursing. It is important for me to engage
myself in genuine care by learning through various experiences with the patients. This has
come with years of practice and dedication.
For me, caring is an art which has to be studied but more than this, it is an attitude in life
which I follow for the patients and also the people around them. It is my duty to create a
healing environment. Researchers have proved that if a patient is given adequate care and
timely medication it can even have miraculous results. For terminally ill patients care is the
most important thing they required. This may add few more months or years in their lives.
Caring is the most important aspect of the nursing profession. As we know that in old age
many patients suffer from lack of care. A proper caring institution can give relief to old age
patient in many aspects (Gélinas, C., Fillion, L., Robitaille, M. A., & Truchon, M. (2012).
The second value that I believe in is the communication. Communication is also very
important to me, my patients and also their relatives. I feel that by effective communication, a
comfort level with the patient is developed by which patient conveys his pain, fear, shares
anxiety (Riley, J. B. (2015). Listening is a very important mode of communication. It requires
nursing skills and attention. By this, we can access the situation and problems of the patient.
By being a good listener I can provide care at all levels of recovery.

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I have seen that a suffering person and his family members require support. This requires
great sensitivity. So, we need to be knowledgeable and should carry enough experience in
nursing to deliver sensitive information in a proper manner. Thus, Confidentiality is a very
important aspect. I have learnt that we must know what kind of information to be given and
whom to be given. We should not give any wrong kind of information or right information to
the wrong person. It causes a negative impact on the patient and the institution.
It is very important to maintain integrity. This is one of the most important characters to
possess. This makes us honest and truthful. It is a very important aspect of nursing. We
should be right and do right. Anything wrong can be a danger to our moral character and
people around us ( Rajacich et al 2013).
It is important to develop an integrated care pathway for the patient. At times, proper
symptom control is impossible in without proper communication (James et al 2014). An
accurate assessment of patient’s health requires effective communication. Communication is
the centre of all treatment. Communication will deliver a great amount of care. In the society
conversation about any dreadful disease is often very awkward and difficult. Among the
health care professionals, there is a requirement of improvement of techniques to overcome
these obstacles. In last two decades, there is awareness of the importance of communication
skills.
We require taking in time quality decision, based on clinical expertise. The aim is to provide
better, healthy and safe care to the patients with most new techniques available. To practice,
nursing knowledge along with multiple studies needs to be utilised without any kind of
discrimination among the patients. All the patients have equal rights to access equal health
care. (Kourkouta, L., & Papathanasiou, I. V. (2014)

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Age-related care approach is required. The approach is based on individual needs; it differs in
different age and medical condition. The approach helps to comfort the individual suffering
from the disease. We should be able to carry out tough conversations with the patient’s
family. These conversations include patient’s current health, the progression of a disease and
anticipated death. The information provided should be honest and it should be provided in a
way that the family members should be able to understand the situation. We need to be
knowledgeable and they should carry enough experience in nursing to deliver sensitive
information in a proper manner (Douglas et al 2014).
In the day to day nursing profession, there is interaction with diverse people. People who
belong to a different race, culture and languages. It is important to provide the same amount
of care across all. There are significant disparities which found among different races. Each
and every one of them requires the same amount of care ( Askew, R. W. (2009). There are
many occasions and multiple reports which tell us that there is an urgent requirement of
reducing disparity. Diversity is a word which means that something different to each person.
We now live in a multicultural world. There are frequently changing demographics and
economics. Health changes need to deal with priority for people having different cultural
background. Cultural diversity has many faces. It comes to us as a different language, gender,
age, occupation, socio-economic status etc. This also brings new changes to health care and
nursing. It is important to understand the pain of person even if it belongs to a different
language. It is essential to provide unbiased and genuine care.( Lowe, J., & Archibald, C.
(2009, January)
During my placement at AGE NI, I get to interact with patients having dementia. Dementia is
one of the broad categories of brain disease. It causes a gradual decrease in ability to

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remember and think. The disease starts with the decrease in motivation, language problem
and day to day common problems. I have interacted with two patients with dementia. The
first patient was a 60 years old male. (Giebel et al 2015)He had mild dementia. At his stage
only he was experiencing memory loss of recent events. He was not liking to interact with
anyone. There was also a bit of frustration in him as he was constantly misplacing things.
Earlier he used to manage finances of his entire house but now he is not able to do it as he
does not remember recent events and gets confused easily. Also during the interaction, I
could feel that he has a lot of trouble expressing his thoughts and recalling anything. At this
stage, the patient requires support from his family member. As I interacted with the patient
that it requires a lot of patient and effective communication strategy to listen to patients with
dementia.
Secondly, I met a 72 years old male, with the late stage of dementia. This is very much
different from the patient with early dementia. There was an almost loss of communication.
He required assistance in almost all the tasks performed. He was not much capable of
walking or sitting. (Hendriks et al 2016)For him, it was very difficult of swallow food hence
while eating his head had to hold up to prevent choking. It is important to give proper care to
dementia patient at an early stage so that its progress can be delayed. Once the disease
progressed to the late stage then it becomes very difficult to improve patient’s condition.

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References
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Riley, J. B. (2015). Communication in nursing. Elsevier Health Sciences.
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Douglas, M. K., Rosenkoetter, M., Pacquiao, D. F., Callister, L. C., Hattar-Pollara, M.,
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James, S. R., Nelson, K., & Ashwill, J. (2014). Nursing care of children: Principles and
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