Nursing Assignment: Discussion On Therapeutic Communication And Interpersonal Relationship

Question

Task: The purpose of this assignment is to enable students to demonstrate beginning skills in critical thinking, clinical reasoning, clinical judgement, and reflective practice.

Answer

Introduction:
Communication is one of the means which is used in order to exchange feeling, message, information with one another (Blake & Blake, 2019). Therapeutic communication is means of interaction conducted interpersonally between the nursing facilities and the patients as well as other healthcare professionals (Arnold& Boggs, 2019). It is focused on the treatment and health care related exchange of information.

Therapeutic communication has a major role in healthcare settings. It has various essential goals such as building nurse-patient relationship, understanding a patient needs and concerns, providing the patient with appropriate healthcare information, implementing affective interventions and attaining safe recovery for the patient (Abdolrahimi et al., 2017). The assignment focuses on discussing the experience and knowledge I attended on the Standard 4 of NMBA standards (Nagle et al., 2017). The Gibb’s reflective cycle is used in order to explain my experience in detail using the 6 steps of the cycle. As a fresher nurse, I had an opportunity of learn several things from the healthcare facilities I was working with. The day I started working after my graduation as a nurse, I was provided with the role to assist the senior nursing facilities in order to learn the working process of the healthcare setting. I started observing every work they were performing, arranging their document, check the patients and taking reports. After few months working in the healthcare setting, I started observing several flaws that were taking place among the nursing staffs and the other health care professional which was leading to deprived recovery of the patients.

Description:
I was working with one of my senior nurses in the department of acute mental health. We were addressing a patient with sever case of anxiety and depression and was admitted a month ago I joined. The patient was in his early 50s and was admitted by his wife as his condition of anxiety and depression was getting worse. Apart from the patient, we were also addressing few other patients in the paediatric department. After few days of addressing the patient of these two sensitive department, I notices that the health of the patients was no getting better and they remained in the same position they were when I joined. The fact made me think about the reason behind the issue.

Feeling:
I started feeling anxious and worried about the fact that the patients were not getting better. Later I recognized that, the nursing staffs and the healthcare professionals barely have any interaction among each other, also, the nurses were less interactive with the patients they were treating. The patients were not comfortable enough to share their needs and requirements to the nursing staffs. The feeling was very disappointing after I came to know that, the patients are not coming up with their difficulties to the nursing staff. Also, the healthcare professionals never discussed about the information they exchange with each other.

Evaluation:
The experience I had provided me with both good as well as bad understanding about the work I was performing. As I witnessed the flaw in the organization I was working with, I came to know how important all the trainings and education that we were provided during out course of being a nurse. It worked as a means of awareness for me as I understood the importance of the Nursing and Midwifery Boards of Australia. It was also a bad experience as I came to know that flaw in the healthcare organization can lead to sever outcome in the patients’ health. The patient suffering from acute anxiety and depression was not getting appropriate treatment as there were several aspects of treatment was getting avoided due to lack of interaction.

Analysis:
After analysing the situation and going through the reports of the patient, I encountered the main reason behind his low recovery rate. As there was no interaction among each other, the nursing staffs were missing to track the dosage of medications that were administrated to the patients. It was observed that he was missing medication several times due to change in the shift hours. Also, the dose of the medication was increased few weeks ago but he was still administered with the previous dose. The analysis of the error that was causing deprive recovery was because of lack of therapeutic communication.

Conclusion:
According to the Nursing and Midwifery Boards of Australia, Standard 4, there should be communication and exchange of information among each health care professional and nursing staffs regarding the patients’ health and treatment process (Cashin et al., 2017). It can only be achieved when the nursing staff, patients and other healthcare facilities have a better therapeutic communication and interpersonal relationship. In the healthcare organization, therapeutic communication was lacking which was the main reason behind all the flaws in the treatment process (Ghiyasvandian, 2019). It was also not enabling patients to interact about the difficulties they were witnessing.

Final evaluation and action plan:
In order to take a proper measure for this condition, an appropriate action plan will be necessary. The SMART goal helps in performing a better advanced action plan for critical situations (Aghera et al., 2018). In order to attain a better health care outcome, it will be necessary that the nursing staffs to develop their interpersonal relationship and therapeutic communication. The effectiveness of the goal can be evaluated by looking at the rate of error taking place and the rate of recovery of the patient (Levy-Storms, Harris& Chen, 2016). The goal can be accomplished by providing the nursing staffs and healthcare professionals with appropriate training and sessions on therapeutic relationship and nursing standards. The training will help the healthcare professional and me in long term process. It will also help the nursing staffs to help their patient attain and error free and advanced treatment.

Reference:
Abdolrahimi, M., Ghiyasvandian, S., Zakerimoghadam, M., & Ebadi, A. (2017). Therapeutic communication in nursing students: A Walker & Avant concept analysis. Electronic physician, 9(8), 4968.
Aghera, A., Emery, M., Bounds, R., Bush, C., Stansfield, R. B., Gillett, B., & Santen, S. A. (2018). A randomized trial of SMART goal enhanced debriefing after simulation to promote educational actions. Western Journal of Emergency Medicine, 19(1), 112. Arnold, E. C., & Boggs, K. U. (2019). Interpersonal Relationships E-Book: Professional Communication Skills for Nurses. Elsevier Health Sciences.
Blake, T., & Blake, T. (2019). Improving therapeutic communication in nursing through simulation exercise. Teaching and Learning in Nursing, 14(4), 260-264.
Cashin, A., Heartfield, M., Bryce, J., Devey, L., Buckley, T., Cox, D., ... & Fisher, M. (2017). Standards for practice for registered nurses in Australia. Collegian, 24(3), 255-266.
Ghiyasvandian, S. (2019). Improving therapeutic communication skills based on the COMFORT Communication curriculum. Iranian Journal of Cancer Nursing (ijcn), 1(3), 48-52.
Levy-Storms, L., Harris, L. M., & Chen, X. (2016). A video-based intervention on and evaluation of nursing aides’ therapeutic communication and residents’ agitation during mealtime in a dementia care unit. Journal of nutrition in gerontology and geriatrics, 35(4), 267-281.
Nagle, C., Heartfield, M., McDonald, S., Morrow, J., Kruger, G., Bryce, J., ... & Hartney, N. (2017). A necessary practice parameter: Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia Midwife standards for practice. Women and Birth, 30, 10-11.