Professional Nurse Patient Communication

Running head: PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION IN NURSING
NURSE-PATIENT COMMUNICATION
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NURSE-PATIENT COMMUNICATION1
An effective health outcome will be achieved if there is an efficient relationship
between nursing professionals and patients. Communication is the major key element that
would enhance and generate a therapeutic relationship among the care provider and care
seeker (Riley, 2015). An effective relationship would also benefit from promoting and
providing patient safety. The therapeutic relationship would also increase engagement among
the healthcare provider and care seeker. This essay intends to examine the effectiveness of a
therapeutic relationship among the nursing profession and patient in promoting the optimal
health outcome and patient safety.
Verbal, as well as non-verbal communication are the two major kinds of
communication skill. It has been found that the nursing staff who have an effective practice
of kindness and courtesy in the communication are more successful in building relationship
and rapport with the patient (Riley, 2015). Nurses are the frontline care provider, and
therefore, verbal communication is an efficient approach for understanding the basic
information of the patient such as personnel details, previous medical condition and other
health-related queries. Good verbal communication would help in clear transferring of
information among the patient and their families about the intervention or process of
treatment. Thus, the tone should be clear and encouraging with courteous that would allow
the patient to engage in the conversation by providing additional information. Alternatively,
non-verbal communication would include body gesture that would enhance effective
communication. Effective non-verbal communication would lead to the interest and
engagement of the patient. Thus, it includes body postures, eye contact, facial expression and
a light touch for conveying the affection of care towards the patient (Burgoon, Guerrero &
Floyd, 2016).
An overall communication such as active listening, open-ended question to the
patients, paraphrasing the statement, reflecting and acknowledging would lead in building a

NURSE-PATIENT COMMUNICATION2
therapeutic relationship between nurses and patient (Levett-Jones, 2020). Person-centred care
is an effective care model, where the service would be provided according to the patients’
needs and demand. The service would be tailored rather than general delivery of care. It has
been found that the adoption and practice of person-centred care have increased the optimal
overall health outcome (Hill et al., 2017). Thus, effective communication would help in
effective implementation of person-centred care model along with assist in adopting the
effective documentation (Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia, 2017). Documentation
is a written recording of every intervention that the patient is undergoing along with the
sequence of processes of treatment. It also includes the personnel details of the patient with
the previous medical history and other health-related matters such as behaviour or lifestyle of
the patient. The major benefits of the documentation would be a clear exchange of patient’s
information among the care providers and would also need in any future research and
education purpose (N.S.W, 2016).
For this essay, considering the scenario one for the assignment, where the name of the
patient is George Pham. He had visited for improving his health and improve the present
lifestyle. He had a stressful lifestyle and had a cough that was constant from the past five
weeks. Nursing staff with effective communication with the patient has documented the
relevant and basic information of the patient such as weight, height and temperature of the
room along with heart rate and respiratory rate. Since the patient had a cough for a longer
time, the nursing staff had implemented more effective communication with the patient to
understand the lifestyle and behaviour and about his family background. The patient started
engaging with the nurse and provided efficiently and details information about his personnel
life and lifestyle. It was found that patient smoke 20 cigarette each day for forty-two years.
Besides, he also takes alcohol every night with the evening meal. Another unhealthy
behaviour was eating from the restaurant daily. All these behaviour and habit of lifestyle