Therapeutic Communication Skills and Inter-Professional Collaboration

Running head: THERAPEUTIC COMMUNICATION SKILLS 1
Therapeutic communication skills and inter-professional collaboration practice are essential
requirements for providing safe nursing care and Promoting Patient-Centered Care.
Student’s Name
University

THERAPEUTIC COMMUNICATION SKILLS 2
Therapeutic communication skills and inter-professional collaboration practice are
essential requirements for providing safe nursing care and Promoting Patient-Centered
Care.
Introduction
Patient-centered care is a new approach to quality provision of healthcare that every
practitioner needs to understand. This approach focusses on the specific health needs and the
desired health outcomes of the individual as the driving force for decision making and quality
measurements. The approach views patients as partners with health care providers where the
relationship between the patient and the provider changes from purely clinical to involve other
elements that are important to the recovery of the patient like emotional, social, spiritual and
even financial needs of the patient. The primary goal of this approach has been improving
individual health outcomes rather than population outcomes which in turn improves the
healthcare systems as well. Peplau theory sees therapeutic communication as the interaction
between the ill person and a practitioner who recognizes the needs of the individual and is able to
respond accordingly. To achieve this approach well, therapeutic communication skills are
required to ensure that there is a clear connection between the patient and the practitioner. Since
the practitioner goes beyond the clinical role, then therapeutic communication skills have to be
identified and at the same time, barriers that may hinder the approach addressed to achieve the
best results.
To be a successful practitioner in patient-centered care and nursing practice practitioners
need several core communication skills that can be applied in their area of work. One of these
skills is the use of reflection where the practitioner repeats the verbal and non-verbal messages to
show the patient that their feelings are being understood. Reflection creates a cognitive focus

THERAPEUTIC COMMUNICATION SKILLS 3
between the practitioner and the patient allowing the creation of empathy, interest, and respect
for the needs of the patient (Kim & Kate, 2008). On the other hand, the patient responds with
increased levels of communication and trust which improve the therapeutic process.
Another skill is exploring communication which is used to encourage the patient to open
up by creating an environment that makes the patient feel like the practitioner is following what
they are saying (Diedrick, Schaffer, & Sandau, 2011). For example, the practitioner uses phrases
like “Assist me to understand what happened”, to trace personal life issues of the patient which
enable gathering of adequate information for decision making.
Active listening through the use of verbal and non-verbal cues that encourage the patient
to continue talking is also an important communication required by practitioners. This includes
showing interest in the information that the patient seeks to communicate and acknowledging
that you are listening and understanding what they are saying (Kourkouta & Papathanasiou,
2014; Webster, 2013). The practitioner can also offer general leads by using certain statements to
guide the conversation thus making it easy to acquire relevant information.
The clarifying skill has also been regarded as important in therapeutic communication
since it assists the practitioner to understand the statements that the patient tries to communicate.
Thus the practitioner is supposed to seek clarification when information is not clear rather than
make conclusions based on clinical experience (Castledine, 2013). Since each individual presents
unique situations, patient-centered approaches require the practitioner to seek clarification
through paraphrasing the words of the patient in a manner that the practitioner has understood
and then requesting the patient to confirm the statement.
In addition to that, making observations is another important skill that the practitioner can
use to draw the attention of the patient to the areas that may be challenging. Such observations