Establishing & Maintaining Therapeutic Relationships: Communication

This essay delves into the crucial role of both verbal and nonverbal communication in establishing and maintaining therapeutic relationships within psychiatric nursing. It emphasizes that the foundation of the psychiatric nursing system is built upon a strong therapeutic relationship between the service provider and the service user. The essay highlights the importance of safety, confidentiality, reliability, consistency, and personal boundaries in fostering trust. Effective communication, including active listening and appropriate nonverbal cues such as eye contact and body language, is presented as essential for building rapport and understanding the service user's needs. The essay also underscores the significance of respecting cultural differences and maintaining professional boundaries to ensure patient satisfaction and ethical practice. It concludes by emphasizing how effective communication improves the behavior of healthcare workers, allowing them to incorporate caring behavior while conducting health and social care services to service users.

Importance of verbal and nonverbal communication in establishing and maintaining a
therapeutic relationship
The entire psychiatric nursing system is focussed in the essence of therapeutic relationship
between the service provider and service user and despite the variety of approaches, the aim
remains the same. In order to enter into relationship both the parties need to have a very good
understanding of each other in terms of safety, confidentiality, reliability, consistency and
personal boundaries. According to Roberts et al. (2015, p.30), the fact that several ailments
which are due to biochemical agents or genetic factors cannot be healed which is quite
disheartening. nonetheless, the therapeutic relation can be effective to provide necessary to
support the service user to tackle the related emotional issues.
The developing phase of a relationship is very critical to the effectiveness of the services and
establishing an alliance can sometimes take a considerable amount of time. The amount of time
required to gain the confidence of the service user depends upon the level of skills and years of
experience of the service provider. The bonding is necessary so as to reduce the levels of
frustration which can lead mutually withdrawing behaviour among both the parties. The
therapeutic relations aim to facilitate, assist, help and promote self-care to the service users.
The service providers need to be able to facilitate communication pertaining to distressful
emotions or thought and assist them with the same (Windover et al. 2014). They are also
required to help the clients in order be self-sustained and keeping the destructive behaviours in
check thus promoting a self-care behaviour in the service users.
The first interaction between the service provider and service user partially determines the
nature of the relation. This means communication is an important component of developing a
therapeutic relationship (Gardner et al. 2014). The service provider needs to have effective
verbal as well as non-verbal communicative skills in order to introduce themselves to the service
users which is necessary for the service users to open up a little to the service provider and
subtle gestures such as handshakes can be very effective non-verbal skill which can be used by
the service provider in order to establish a sense of trust and honour.
In words of Simmons-Mackie (2013), once the initial relationship has been established the
service provider needs to understand the boundaries that they need to maintain in order to
adhere to the ethical and professional norms. Service users have their own requirements for
privacy and safety and this is required to be recognised and understood by the service provider
in order to further strengthen the relationship. In order to provide total customer satisfaction, the
service provider needs to keep tab of the basic needs of the service user and this include pills

for pain relief or any other prescribed pills for discomfort. It is a legal violation of service user’s
rights if their privacy and safety is threatened by the service provider.
During the developing phase, the service user can have a number of concerns which need to be
addressed in order to clarify the situation. In order to do this, it is necessary for the service
provider to actively listen to the service users and their verbalised account can be restated in
order to signify that their concerns have been taken into consideration. However, according to
Epstein et al. (2014), if the concerns are restated too much the service users feel that they their
concerns are not valued anymore and this can only mean that the service provider is not
interested to provide any assistance in order to resolve the issues.
Eye contact is a very important part of the communication, however, there is a fine line between
being reassuring and intimidating. The non-verbal gestures are necessary in order to exhibit that
the conversations are welcomed and smiling and nodding head can help in boosting the
confidence of the service user towards the actions of the service provider (Bloomer et al. 2017).
The workers are required to maintain a legible speech tempo and should be able to enunciate
properly in order to aid the user’s understanding of the discussions. The way workers speak and
listen to the users need to show that their primary objective is to care for the patient.
It has been stated before also that professional boundaries need to be maintained in order to
sustain the therapeutic relationship and hence, the workers require to obey the wishes if the
customers. Service users may have their perception of how the service should be provided and
while some of the patients require therapeutic touches such as hugging some prefer that they
are not touched (Webster, 2014). Another very important factor that needs to be taken into
account while developing and sustaining the relation is to respect the differences in culture and
there is no chance that ill comments regarding the user’s culture will be tolerated.
Communication is very necessary in order to help the patient achieve harmony in terms of mind
and body while being actively engaged in therapeutic relation. The effective communications
can help in improving the behaviour of the workers and helps them to incorporate a caring
behaviour while conducting the health and social care services to the service users. The
positive result of employing such a relationship can be helpful to both the parties as the service
users can enjoy quality services while the service providers can learn from these experiences
which can a scale of their competency and capability (Crotty and Doody, 2015).
While verbal communications are necessary for communicating information, there may be
situations when verbal communication may not be possible and in such a situation the use of
non-verbal communications skills is necessary to understand the situation. Non-verbal
communication showcase an individual's ability to relate and engage in discussions which they

use to establish some meaningful interactions that can be used in the everyday activities
(Procter et al. 2015). Nonverbal communications or body language need to be positive in order
to understand the various unidentified variables in play in therapeutic relations.

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