Effective Nurse-Patient Communication: A Case Study Analysis Essay

This essay explores the necessity of professional communication in nursing practices, focusing on how it facilitates a better understanding of a patient's health condition. It references the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia (NMBA) standards for interpersonal communication. The essay presents a case study of Eileen Murphy, a 66-year-old patient, and analyzes the communication between her and a nurse. It discusses both verbal and non-verbal communication methods used by healthcare providers to interact with patients, emphasizing patient-centered care. The importance of documentation in healthcare, including recording test results and observations, is also highlighted. The essay concludes that effective professional communication is essential in hospital units for understanding patients' health conditions and that nursing staff should adhere to the guidelines provided by the NMBA.

Running Head: PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION
Professional communication
Case study essay on professional communication
Australia
4/17/2018

PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION 1
Professional Communication between Nurse and Patient
In the practices of daily activities people can distract or move off direction from the
serious business priorities. Over the time it has been observed that the communication, either
to one person or a large group of people, must communicate with each individual person
present in the audience. In nursing practices, professional communication is the essential
element to study the patient’s health conditions. This essay aims to discuss the necessity of
professional communication in nursing, indicating how professional communication
facilitates the understanding of health study of the patient.
The Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia has some standards that must be
followed by the registered nurses for their interpersonal communication with their patients.
The principles of code apply to all kind of midwifery practices in all the contexts. This
includes every kind of work in which midwives use their midwifery knowledge and skills
whether it is a paid or unpaid and clinical or non-clinical practice (NMBA, 2017).
This report has discussion of professional communication between a nurse and a patient
“Eileen Murphy”. Eileen Murphy is a 66 year old female patient living at 48 Villahome Drive
St, Southwood, Australia 2074. She has four children and shifted to Australia in 1956. She
has no allergies and feeling well. Presently she exercises only for 10 minutes but she has a
routine of moving here and there looking after children in her care. She does not drink in
week days but on weekends, when she visits club, she has 6-7 glasses of wine. Eileen
Murphy feels well but sometimes she gets tired and skips breakfast. For lunch and dinner she
eats takeaway foods. Although Eileen Murphy has no allergies and is quite well but
sometimes she feels tired, therefore, she decided to go for a health check-up and tries to know
what she could do to make her condition better.

PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION 2
For health-care providers, it is essential to use an effective professional communication
skill with people to ensure their respective proficiency in language such as oral and written
competencies. Health care providers use both verbal as well as non-verbal communication to
interact with the patients to understand their health position/condition.
Generally, nurses and midwives use oral communication extensively. This makes a
person centred interaction which helps to make oral reports and to make accurate healthcare
documents. Patient centred care is the most essential element of patient safe communication
in order to change the landscape of health care as well as the health care education. The
patient centred care has many definitions and each definition features like Dignity, Respect,
Empathy, Autonomy, Transparency, desire, and choice to help the individual patient to lead
to the life they want (Smith & Topham, 2016). Care aspects include verbal interaction to give
oral reports to the other members of health care team, to produce care plans, and to record the
health progress of the patient in the chart. In this type of communication, the nurse on duty
asked Eileen about his problem and her experiences about the problem. They talked about the
time from when she was facing the problem and also trying to know the probable cause of the
issue by interacting with Eileen
Verbal communication and Non-verbal communication are the types of communication
and non-communication is defined as the communication in which the information is
transferred by means of body language instead of using words. Body language is what is not
said. Therefore, non-verbal communication is often defined as the body language. Eunson
indicates it is not accurate to define non-verbal communication as body language as it also
includes how we adorn ourselves, what we wear, and the way in which we use our time
(Eunson, 2016). For example in nursing practices sometimes a nurse needs to examine the
meaning of a crying child. There are many forms of non-verbal communication such as
Facial Expressions, Physical Appearance, Paralanguage, Spatial Behaviour etc. The physical

PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION 3
appearance is related with the decoration form of the person like clothes and other
adornments. This comes under the control of wearer. In this case study nurse needs to
examine the meaning of Eileen Murphy’s tense look. Sometimes it is observed that the non-
verbal communication express more the message that a verbal communication unable to
communicate. In this context nurse observed the physical gesture and expressions of Eileen to
understand the problem. The nurse observed the problem by touching the Eileen’s different
body parts too, to examine whether there is a pain in any part or not.
The communication between health care advisers and patient followed by the
documentation process. Documentation is a written/electronically generated authentic record
of all the patients kept for the further references by the care takers. In this context nurse
prepared a document for Eileen Murphy which records all the results of different tests like
Body Mass Index – 20, Blood Pressure – 162/90, HR – 96, RR – 20, Temperature – 364o C,
SaO2 - 99% on room temperature. The main motive of this Documentation practice is to
create an environment which supports accurately, timely, secure and confidential keeping of
the data and use it for the further examination of the patient in the process of treatment.
This discussion concludes that, in most of the hospital units, profession communication
in nursing units is much needed. Staff, in hospital units, has to communicate with their
patients in an effective way so that they can understand the true condition of patients’ health.
For professional communication of nursing staff should follow the guidelines provides by
Nursing and midwifery Board of Australia. The communication between nurse and the
patient, Eileen Murphy, discussed here was justifying the professional communication
guidelines of the Nursing and midwifery Board of Australia. The way in which nurse was
trying to communicate with Eileen was very good and Eileen was satisfied with all the
interaction with the nurse which make her comfortable and able to communicate her message
to the nurse.

PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION 4

PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION 5
References
Eunson, B. (2016). Interpersonal Skills. Retrieved April 16, 2018, from Academia Education:
http://www.academia.edu/18060447/Interpersonal_Skills_2_2016_4th._ed_
NMBA (Ed.). (2017). New Codes of Conducts for Nurses and Midwives. Retrieved 2018,
from Nursing Codes of Conduct for Nurses and Midwives:
http://www.nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au/News/2017-09-28-new-codes-of-
conduct.aspx
Smith, K., & Topham, C. (2016). Patient-Centred Care. Journal of Medical Imaging and
Radiation Sciences , 47, 373-375.