Therapeutic Nurse-Client Relationship Analysis

An essential concept for nurses to thoroughly understand is establishing a positive therapeutic nurse-client relationship (TNCR). To establish a TNCR, nurses must abide by the College of Nurses of Ontario Practice Standard Therapeutic Nurse-Client Relationships (2006).
To further explore how TNCR affect patient outcomes, there were 10 primary peer-reviewed scholarly research articles that were found using the OneSearch Finder search engine from the Sault College database. These articles were all published within the last five years and they came from a variety of nursing journals, such as the “Journal of Advanced Nursing”. The countries in which the studies were conducted were Australia, China, Iran, Norway, Taiwan, United Kingdom and the
Rose, Peter, Gallop, Angus and Liaschenko (2011) conducted a study that examined the concept of respect from the perspective of a forensic psychiatric nurse. The findings of the study showed that the progression, expression and maintenance of respect depended on the type of respect, whether it was “care respect or Kantian” (p. 11). The article also discussed how empathy involving psychiatric patients was “seldom spontaneous, but instead required deliberate effort” (p. 8). Trust was also assessed and it was noted that trust was given and received but the nurse was responsible for initiating trust. Some nurses expressed that they never trusted patients but that the patients were “compliant with ward and program parameters” (p. 8). In the nursing profession, the goal is to achieve positive TNCR outcomes. There was a select few of the researched articles that discussed results of positive TNCR outcomes. In the article written by Cahill, Paley and Hardy (2013), patients received either psychodynamic interpersonal therapy or cognitive behavioural therapy and their perceptions of the therapies were being examined. The findings showed that the perceptions of both theories did not significantly differ but rather, the patients expressed how much they valued the relationship during both therapies. The article written by Eriksen, Arman, Davidson, Sundfør and Karlsson (2013) concluded that nurses who respected a client’s dignity were able to effectively communicate and as a result, achieved positive TNCR outcomes. In the study conducted by Khodadadi, Ebrahimi, Moghaddasian, and Babapour (2013), they found that training of communication skills can enhance the nurses’ rate of communication skills and in turn, it can allow for improved quality of nursing care. Lastly, in the article written by Hoxmark (2010), the study concluded