University Nursing Report: Interpersonal Communication Skills Analysis

This report analyzes the importance of interpersonal communication skills in nursing, focusing on a real-life scenario in an aged care facility. It explores the challenges faced by a graduate nurse when interacting with an elderly patient experiencing memory issues and the subsequent miscommunication with the patient and her son. The report delves into the significance of therapeutic communication techniques, including active listening, empathy, and building trust, to foster a positive nurse-patient relationship. It examines the impact of health literacy and the role of effective communication in creating a supportive environment for patients and their families. The analysis highlights the need for clear, understandable language, and the importance of a coordinated approach involving the healthcare team, patient, and family to ensure optimal patient well-being. The report concludes with a call for nurses to apply therapeutic communication and health literacy skills to develop effective care plans.

Running head: NURSING
NURSING
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Discussion:.................................................................................................................................4
Analysis:.................................................................................................................................4
Conclusion:................................................................................................................................7
References..................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
Strong collaborative partnerships between nurse-patient are supported by good
interpersonal communication skill. Sitting next to a patient when chatting will help boost
patient satisfaction level for a fleeting time. Effective communication techniques are
important to nurses, who face chaotic environments and complex clinical workflows almost
all the time (Kourkouta & Papathanasiou, 2014). The use of appropriate interpersonal
communication techniques by nurses in both professional and personal contexts are found to
alleviate tension, fostering well-being leading to the enhancement of quality of life.
Communication is the information transmission between a sender and a recipient. It used to
be where you just needed to think about how you spoke on paper or face-to-face.
Communication strategies are indeed the prototypes about how to share the information.
Therapeutic communication is a set of strategies, which offer priority to patients ' physical,
emotional and mental well-being. Nurses offer guidance and knowledge to patients, while
retaining a sense of detachment and objectivity to the practice (Registerednursing.org, 2020).
The communication strategies must be followed by a nurse are deliberate silence, making eye
contact with patient and accepting their emotion, acknowledge patients’ behavior and
encourage them by overt compliment, spending time with the patient, encouraging patient by
giving broad openings, listening to the patient carefully, seeking clarification to the speech of
the patient, asking smart questions to get a clear idea about the diseased condition, deep
observation, reflecting, confronting, voicing doubt and offering optimism as well as humor
(Registerednursing.org, 2020).

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Discussion:
Analysis:
In this paper I will be reflecting on a situation took place during my working year as
a graduate nurse in an Aged care Facility. I find out the importance of some strategies of
interpersonal communication skills, when one of my aged patient become frustrated by my
approach to help her. My duty as a nurse was to help her, as she was looking upset and
confused, and finding difficulty to find her bed. However, my intension got a reverse effect as
she and her son both misbehaved with me blaming me for the condition of the patient, Mrs.
Pamela, aged 78.
I analyzed the incident to understand the reason of the frustration of the patient and
her son. I find out that there is major communication gap between the patient and the nurse.
The communication firstly I want to shed light occurred between the previous shift nurse,
who was taking care for the patient at the day time and the patient. Mrs. Pamela was suffering
from the problem of failing memory, and she was unable to remember the exact location of
her bed. Her condition was critical and needed more attention from the previous nurse. Many
patients are able to successfully compose and deliver a message, interpret and respond to the
message, based on the degree of awareness of the individual. Someone else may either give a
response or directly obtain a reply, whereas some cannot do any of them. It is the
responsibility of the nurse to recognize the patients’ capability and take action accordingly.
As per the incident, it was the duty of the previous nurse to understand the severe condition
of Mrs. Pamela’s condition by verbal and non-verbal condition to ensure the well-being of
the patient and eliminate any further ambiguity in her absence (Fukada, 2018).
On my opinion, as a nurse I also did not followed the exact and effective strategy to
console, win the trust and give quality care of the patient. In fact, the patient became more
frustrated by my action. When I noticed her, she was crying softly, indicating her depression

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level and looking very upset as well as frustrated because of her short or failing memory. The
ideal and most effective attempt should be taken to make the individual feel relaxed that she
can put her faith and confidence in me and become cooperative. Communication may be
significantly affected as tension and other mental conditions such as anxiety, apprehension,
depression, and uncertainty influence the person adversely. The nurse should try to relieve
these effects so that this obstacle can be resolved for successful interaction (Fite et al., 2020).
Therefore, as a nurse, my first step should be identify the mental condition of the patient and
built a trust with calm and composed way to ensure a healthy nurse-patient relationship (Fite
et al., 2020).
Healthy and strong interaction between nurses, health service team, patient and
families of patients influences the well-being of patients, and also the consistency as well
as result of nursing care. As per a report , facilitative factors between nurses and the
communication of families consisted of religious or spiritual care, social encouragement,
notification and consultation, active participation, and barriers which were misunderstandings
of treatment, work and patient problems (Hadian Shirazi et al., 2015). Good quality
Community Interaction is the foundation of healthcare art and research. Poor or unhealthy
relationships between the patient’s family and recovery teams result in tension, personality,
insecurity, abuse, resentment within patient families, exactly what happened in the case of
Mrs. Pamela’s family. Her son shouted at me seeing the condition of her mother. It was clear
from the reaction of the man that he was unaware about the shift changes and the condition of
her mother. The contrast and conflict between family and treatment team members, the
implementation of less successful and poor decision-making treatment plants is the expected
outcome in this type of condition, influencing more damage and loss of the patient. However,
it is very normal to become a little bit aggressive when one see suffering of the close ones
(Hadian Shirazi et al., 2015).

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The patient is identified with impaired memory and depression. A care plan was
needed to design immediately for her. People with cognitive disability can face a series of
behavioural difficulties that clinicians can find challenging. Those can involve problems with
communicating, violent or impulsive behavior, and depression, loss of energy, concentration
disorders, incontinence, poor judgment, and wandering. Predicting ups and downs of the
moods of the patient, retaining composure, kindness, and a sense of humour can help a nurse
to deal with stressful behavior more effectively (Caregiver.org, 2020). This would be
beneficial to keep the vocabulary clear and pose one question at a time. Recognizing the
opinions of the patient on physical and mental wellbeing problems is important for
customizing approaches that lead in consistent treatment. It might be essential
to demonstrate e a range of methods that the patient can recall basic things to meet
their needs. Poor perceptions, shame, and anxiety of memory impairment should also be
resolved, and participants must be ensured of confidentiality. In contrast to the pathological
cognitive decline, educating older adults about normal memory reductions may
establish reassurance and endorse productive adaptation (Abdolrahimi et al., 2017).
Analysis of the whole scenario shed a light about the communication skills must be
applied in the case of Mrs. Pamela. As per the previous discussion the first and foremost is
keeping the language easy, understandable and organize a stress-free enquiry pattern. This
helps the patient to react well to the nurse. Other is to build a trustworthy relationship with
the family of the patient and the patent, to avoid unwanted conflicts and ensure effective care
plan (Prestige Nursing + Care, 2020).
Health literacy includes a diverse set of abilities in reading, hearing, observation,
including decision-making, and the capacity to adapt certain abilities to health circumstances.
Which requires the capacity to grasp prescription medication label notes, appointment sheets,
medical information brochures, doctor's orders and consent documents, as well as the ability

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to navigate diverse health care programs. Recent concepts concentrate on different abilities
available to manage the health care environment, and the significance of direct contact
between health care professionals and their patients (Ahrq.gov, 2020). The health literacy
skills chiefly needed to handle this particular case is the patient-nurse communication skill,
with a touch of education. Issues with health awareness and poor coordination put patients at
a higher risk with harmful effects that can be avoided. An individual may not recognize the
consequences of their condition and the value of preventive and recovery strategies, or is
unwilling to obtain health care facilities due to communication issues, there could be an
adverse case. However, these problem can be resolved by effective communication with the
patient and the family, with educating them about the treatment plan and the condition of the
patient (Nnlm.gov, 2020).
Conclusion:
It can be concluded from the study that effective communication skill is as much
needed as the medical treatment to ensure the wellbeing of the patient. The patient and the
family need to bond well with the health care team, especially with the nurse to get an
effective therapeutic outcome. It is also the duty of the nurse to apply the therapeutic
communication skills, and health literacy skills to identify, analyze, evaluate and design
effective care plan for the patient. The wellbeing of a patient can be ensured by the
coordinated effort of the health care team, patients’ family and the patient.

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References:
Abdolrahimi, M., Ghiyasvandian, S., Zakerimoghadam, M., & Ebadi, A. (2017). Therapeutic
communication in nursing students: A Walker & Avant concept analysis. Electronic
Physician, 9(8), 4968-4977. https://doi.org/10.19082/4968
Ahrq.gov. (2020). Nurses Can Help Improve Health Literacy in Patient Care | Agency for
Health Research and Quality. Ahrq.gov. Retrieved 23 March 2020, from
https://www.ahrq.gov/chain/practice-tools/drug-safety/nurses-can-help-improve-
health-literacy.html.
Caregiver.org. (2020). Caring for Adults with Cognitive and Memory Impairment | Family
Caregiver Alliance. Caregiver.org. Retrieved 23 March 2020, from
https://www.caregiver.org/caring-adults-cognitive-and-memory-impairment.
Fite, R., Assefa, M., Demissie, A., & Belachew, T. (2020). Predictors of therapeutic
communication between nurses and hospitalized patients. Semanticscholar.org.
Retrieved 23 March 2020, from https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Predictors-of-
therapeutic-communication-between-and-Fite-Assefa/
522b3f6fcafac455810dbebd2995a6d344fc1db5.
Fukada, M. (2018). Nursing Competency: Definition, Structure and Development. Yonago
Acta Medica, 61(1), 001-007. https://doi.org/10.33160/yam.2018.03.001
Hadian Shirazi, Z., Sharif, F., Rakhshan, M., Pishva, N., & Jahanpour, F. (2015). The
Obstacles against Nurse-Family Communication in Family-Centered Care in Neonatal
Intensive Care Unit: a Qualitative Study. Journal Of Caring Sciences, 4(3), 207-216.
https://doi.org/10.15171/jcs.2015.021
Kourkouta, L., & Papathanasiou, I. (2014). Communication in Nursing Practice. Materia
Socio Medica, 26(1), 65. https://doi.org/10.5455/msm.2014.26.65-67

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Nnlm.gov. (2020). Health Literacy | NNLM. Nnlm.gov. Retrieved 23 March 2020, from
https://nnlm.gov/initiatives/topics/health-literacy
Prestige Nursing + Care. (2020). How to Help an Elderly Relative cope with Memory LKoss.
Prestige Nursing + Care. Retrieved 23 March 2020, from https://www.prestige-
nursing.co.uk/dementia/help-elderly-relative-cope-memory-loss
Registerednursing.org. (2020). Registerednursing.org. Retrieved 23 March 2020, from
https://www.registerednursing.org/nclex/therapeutic-communication/