Essay Sample on Therapeutic Communication Techniques

Throughout the entire patient experience in clinical and non-clinical areas, communication has proved to be vital. This responsibility falls to the entire team in health care sector. Therefore, nurses must communicate most especially when the patients have intense stress. Nurses who display courtesy, kindness, and security to their patients that is through action and words are always auspicious in creating a better rapport with the patients. There is still important to understand the nurse-patient interaction since you can know the patients' concern, as well as demonstrating willingness, hear what every patient says. To entirely understand communication, nurses carefully consider when and where to talk to the patient (Apker, 2013).

As I was interacting with one of my resident I was able to understand that sufficient time is needed for patient interaction. My resident was overly hesitant and nervous which left me with no option but giving them more time to express themselves so that we could come to a definite conclusion of the problem. There was some hindrance during provision of effective open communication thereby the treatment process was slowing down. During the interaction, I was uncomfortable since the resident expressed some signs of anger as they talked. Asking the resident to relax and breathe in and out helps a lot in such cases since the patient has room for one sentence to the other. Nodding your head and telling them you understand what they are going through also lessens the rate of feeling uncomfortable.

Physician-patient communication problems are associated with patient dissatisfaction during in-person consultation. When they are less satisfied, they are less likely to return to the appointments. Therefore, in my case, I had to ask the if patient was satisfied as we interacted since I understood very well their problem and I was willing to be there for them to the end. This motivates and makes them feel free to talk even their long-hidden issues with you as a health practitioner. Active listening is an essential technique for therapeutic communication since a nurse is required to pay close attention to the patient's word s and understand such information through critical analysis. By active listening, I was able to give my patient enough time to express their concerns, fears, and then analyze this using all the senses. I asked them to show their pains with every sort of facial expression since this gave me the room the measure the strength of their misery. This process requires the physician to have self-control, remain non-judgmental, as well as engage in non-verbal communication with the client (Martich, 2016).

My resident had some hearing aid on her ears that made me shout when I was asking those questions. At first, I was irritated since she could not hear what I asked them. I identified this as my weakness, and I corrected it as the interaction continued by practicing self-control and being more attentive to get what my resident had to say. My resident gave me an idea that she had practiced some ways of facilitated communication since she overly used hands to express her feelings during the communication process. I also had to use the same that to make the entire dialogue lively and jovial since both the patient and I were on the same line of communication. Throughout the process, I did not sympathize with her since this lowers the effectiveness of interaction (Nah & Tan, 2016).

My patient who was on hearing aid practiced facilitated communication since it helped her make choices. There earlier I had used some picture board that helped express her feelings. The picture boards were related to the topic, and therefore I figured they would be helpful forms of non-facilitative communication. I also used speech synthesizer that helped my resident in her physical skills that improved her self-confidence. This reduced the rate of her using facilitated conversation, and I was able to understand everything she said she explained very clearly. In the end, the interaction was successful since the client was jovial and very cooperative.

References

Apker, J. (2013). Communication in Health Organizations.

Martich, D. M. (2016). Telehealth Nursing: Tools and Strategies for Optimal Patient Care. New York: Springer Publishing Company.

Nah, F. F.-H, Tan, & C.-H. (2016). HCI in Business, Government, and Organizations: Information Systems: Third International Conference, HCIBGO 2016, Held as Part of HCI International 2016, Toronto, Canada, July 17-22, 2016, Proceedings, Part II.