Nursing Reflection on Forming Therapeutic and Professional Relationships with Patients

Running head: NURSING REFLECTION
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Nursing Reflection
Student’s Name
University

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Introduction
The registered nurse standards for practice defines how nursing practitioners in Australia need to
engage with patients within the field of practice to achieve the required clinical outcomes. Since
the practitioners are accountable for the license that they are given by the board, then every
practitioner responsible for the way they conduct themselves within the field of practice (Ware,
2017). The board has established a set of standards that practitioners need to engage in to ensure
that they meet the established needs of patient. Australia is a country with a mixture of different
patient profiles which means that the practitioner needs to exercise the highest level of
professionalism to achieve the desired patient outcomes. This essay reflects on the second
nursing standard using the Gibb’s reflection framework.
Description
From the video, the practitioner is seen engaging with the second standard of nursing practice
through forming therapeutic and professional relationships with the patient. These relationships
are important in clinical practice since they assist both the practitioner and the patient to develop
a clinical relationship that helps in achieving the required outcomes (Hawamdeh & Fakhry,
2014). By greeting the patient with his name and informing him of the activities that are to take
place in the room, the practitioner is establishing and sustaining relationships by defining
professional and personal boundaries. This is seen in the kind of questions that he asks the
patient and how he responds to the questions that the practitioner asks. This assists the two to
connect in professional way that defines the boundaries that exist between them. As the two
engage each other in the process, a strong bind develops between the two allowing the
practitioner to get cooperation from the patient on every process since the patient feels

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accommodated by the practitioner. (Feo, Rasmussen, Wiechula, Conroy, & Kitson, 2016)The
characteristics of therapeutic relationships are seen in empathy where the practitioner asks the
patient how he has been doing and genuineness where the patient is informed why the vital signs
are being tested. Further, care and warmth is seen in the whole process when the practitioner asks
the patient how long he has been on the clinical process and assures him that all is well and on
the healing process. By communicating effectively with the patient through a way that respects
dignity, values and rights, the practitioner ensures that the rights of the patient are protected but
at the same time seeks to achieve the clinical reason why the patient is in the room. The
formation of therapeutic and professional relationship is thus a strategy that practitioners use to
engage patients at a personal level to achieve the desired outcomes.
Feelings
For the practitioner to achieve the intended results, there was need to approach the patient
professionally by establishing a therapeutic relationship that improves the engagement that the
two have. Initially I thought the nurse will have difficulties interacting with the patient and
forming rapport which will have challenged the whole process. However, tailoring therapeutic
and professional relationship formation strategies with communication skills made it easy for the
practitioner to penetrate the world of the patient and form a strong bond that continued being
cemented as the two engaged each other throughout the whole process (Moreno-Poyato, et al.,
2017). The practitioner seemed to be prepared for the whole process and had a strategy of
engaging the patient from the beginning. By calling the patient by his name when initiating the
first contact, the practitioner ensures that he wins the personality of the patient regardless of the
background that they come from. This makes it easy for the whole process since the two engage