Effective Communication Skills and Medication Management for Mental Health Patients

Running head: NURSING
Nursing
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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NURSING
Introduction
The following essay is based on the case study of Peter, 45-year old man and
is an electrician by profession. He has attended the afterhours medical clinical with
healthcare issues related to insomnia.
Answer 1
Empathy and therapeutic relationships are two important aspects of
motivational interviewing. Motivational interviewing is used by the nursing
professionals to promote collaborative partnership with the patients and thereby
helping to highlight the clinical priority and designing the nursing care plan
accordingly. Empathy is often defined as the capacity to position self in another’s
emotional state of mind (Finset & Ørnes, 2017). Empathy is expressed with the
reciprocal turns-of-talks initiating with patients; expression of the emotions along with
the perception, vicarious emotional experiences and empathetic response by the
clinician. The execution of empathetic expression during the implementation of the
interpersonal or effective communication skills occurs when the emotions of the
patient have been detected and vicariously experienced. Moreover, the healthcare
professionals should anyhow respond to the patient in order to indicate that the
message has been understood (Finset & Ørnes, 2017). The analysis of the condition
of the Peter highlights that he might be suffering from paranoia. This is because, his
belief or thought process is influenced by anxiety or fear and are often irrational or
delusional. Thus in order to handle his complex state of mind, his underlying though-
process or why he is thinking in that particular way might be understood. The use of
empathy or empathetic listening by the execution of the effective communication
skills will deal with active listening with attentive body language. Such active listening

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NURSING
will be non-argumentative while making timely response or connection with the
patient’s concerns. In doing so, the patient might feel that the listener or the nursing
professional on the other side is actually concerned about his health without having
any judgemental attitude. This understanding helps the client to discuss their mental
health concerns in more detail with the healthcare professionals. In order words, it
can be said that this understanding of the client, that the listener is non-judgemental
helps in the development of trust with the listener and thus facilitating the
development of the therapeutic relationship. The development of the therapeutic
relationship with the client helps in proper identification of the clinical priority and
thereby promoting the development of the person-centred care plan (Richardson,
Percy & Hughes, 2015).
Thus in the summary it can be said that active listening with empathy will help
to earn the trust of Peter and thereby helping in the establishment of the therapeutic
relationship with Peter and increasing the scope of understanding of the underlying
complex mental health concern.
Answer 2
Mental health nursing is a complex profession that demands compassion,
sensitivity and proper development of trustworthy relationship with the client. The
principal way of psychiatric nursing is execution of effective communication skills in
order to help patients to cope with the challenging mental health complications
(Evans, Nizette, O'Brien, Johnson & Rmn, 2017). Peter is also suffering the complex
mental health complications that are characterised by unwanted influx of anxiety and
irrational fear. It is due to this reason; he is suffering from insomnia along with
profuse sweating under normal body temperature (Furnes, Kvaal & Høye, 2018).