Communication Skills In Nursing

Analysis of Communication Skills Communication is an essential skill a nurse must have in order to be successful in understanding and connecting with patients. The ability to utilize therapeutic communication techniques while interacting with patients to build a strong foundation for the nurse-patient relationship is also very crucial. Therapeutic communication is important to the nurse because, “Nurses who are competent, honest, skilled communicators are viewed as effective and compassionate caregivers” (Taylor, 2015, p. 461). In order to practice communication skills, an interview was conducted between the student nurse and an individual with a health concern, who will be referred to as the patient. The interview was voice recorded to allow
Listening attentively to the patient is a crucial skill and involves more than simply listening to the words that a patient is saying. Listening is defined as, “active and demanding,” and “is the route to understanding” (Jarvis, 2015, p.28). Being aware of what the patient is saying and why they may be something is an important part of the interview process. During the interview that was conducted, it was apparent that the interviewer was listening to the patient, but there was still a much deeper level of listening that needed to be reached. For example, by truly listening to the patient the interviewer could have picked up on small cues that the patient was saying that would have uncovered much more information than simply asking more questions. While a nurse is listening during the interview process, the focus should be entirely on the patient and what they are saying. A flaw that was experienced while conducting the interview was that the interviewer had moments where she was distracted by her own thoughts or the format she was attempting to follow that made her lose focus and not give the patient the attention that she should have, this was shown through short responses to that patient without any well thought out response, for example the response, “oh okay”, was commonly used before asking another question. The interview would have been improved if the interviewer would
By taking the time to perfect communication techniques and learning the different ways of therapeutic communication, a nurse can build an effective helping relationship with his or her patients. By analyzing the student-patient recorded interview, it was apparent that there is always room for improvement with communication and it served as a great way to find things to focus on improving. Regardless of the mistakes, there was still good communication skills used and it seems that a good foundation was laid to allow for the sharing of information in a comfortable setting but could still use improvement in some