THERAPEUTIC RELATIONSHIP

A STRUCTURED REFLECTION ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF A THERAPEUTIC RELATIONSHIP WITH A CLIENT In this essay, I am going to give a structured reflective account on the development of a therapeutic relationship with a client on one of my clinical placements as part of my training as a student nurse. I will be using a reflective model which explores the processes involved in developing and maintaining such relationships bearing in mind theoretical knowledge and how it applies to this clinical experience. Jasper (2003) describes reflective practice as one of the ways that professionals learn from experience in order to understand and develop their practice. As a trainee health care professional, I have learnt the importance of reflection in practice as a platform for judging one’s progress, strengths and weaknesses and also as a tool for appraising what went well during an intervention and what needs to be improved upon. Reflective practice is an important factor for nurses when building a therapeutic relationship with clients. Though this is essential in all nursing practices, it cannot be over emphasised in Mental Health nursing as this is based on quite a lot of understanding and trust between nurses and client. It is also now a respected and required learning and assessment method in many nursing programmes worldwide. The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC, 2008) requires nurses to keep knowledge and skills up to date throughout their working life. Considering the importance of clinical competence in the nursing profession, then it will suffice to say that reflection is an important tool in the nurse’s range of skills which aids the achievement and maintenance of clinical competence and performance (Mattews, 2004).
I have chosen to use the Gibb’s, (1988) reflective cycle as a model of reflection to help me systematically analyse the experience better for the purpose of this essay and for future practice. This model is made up of six stages depicted as a cycle which

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