Nursing Communication: Active Listening and Trust - Essay Sample

Introduction

In Nursing, different communication types are essential in ensuring maximum output and reduce any potential conflict of miscommunication at the workplace. Considering how we communicate with other peers or individuals is a critical step for excellent communication skills. Some nurses are likely to practice active listing while others prefer talking. There are diverse ways of communicating with others in a business or personal communication. Communication can be inspired by trust, active listening, written communication, verbal or non-verbal communication. In the nursing field, contact forms an essential part of every day to day life. The paper focuses on exploring different communication types used in the nursing field.

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Verbal Communication

Verbal communication refers to direct talking. Verbal communication plays a vital role in nurse's communication. The extend on how verbal communication will be effective is depended on the person being addressed and the speaker. If a nurse is treating an elderly patient, observing ethics such as higher volume, clear and slow communication is highly expected. Nursing should perform verbal communication by facing their patients while talking.

It is essential to ensure the information being expressed is understood by the patient. It is evident that the medical terminology used in hospitals are not recognized by most people; therefore, breaking the information further to aa form, which can be understood, is essential. For cases such as drug administration, tests, and blood work within the hospital, the nurse needs to embrace verbal communication skills. Results obtained from various application areas can be presented in a written form.

Written Communication

In the case of nurse-nurse communication, written communication is an essential part of the conversation. Written communication involves information exchange through messaging form. Written communication is majorly observed when charting patient care programs. Nurses must manage accurate written records demonstrating a high level of attention being offered to a patient. Some primary reasons for maintaining written records include: (1) ensuring the treatment and care being provided to a patient continues safely despite the current changing staff. Especially during shifts, leaving behind a well-written document concerning given care on an individual patient (Beauvais et al. 2019). (2) to ensure a record has been kept on the care that has been given to a particular patient.

Documenting patient care information is an essential aspect of the nursing sector. A well-written communication serves as the critical protection for both the nurse and the patient being attended. Therefore, ensuring a piece of accurate information in patient care documentation is a crucial part of a nurse's work output. It is, therefore, the duty of a nurse to ensure all relevant information such as the date and all related aspects are recorded.

Maintaining clear and factual information at the workplace can provide any worst-case scenario such as mis-treatment of patients or lost data are highly avoided increasing overall work output. The information being shared on a given patient determines how effective subsequent processes will be undertaken. Failing to document the events accurately can lead to serious communication, which can increase risk towards the care to be given to a patient.

Active Listening

Another communication attribute that the nurses should be keen to focus on is maintaining active listening. It entails a person to fully concentrate on what another speaker says and not passively hearing what they are talking about. It majorly involves the listener to use ears. However, nurses should be keen to capture body language, tone variation, and facial expressions. Such as situation occurs mostly is a patient is severely ill and if their condition causes them to have pain. The pain will be evident in the patient's voice and also in their facial representation. Through active listening, it makes the nurses understand what the patients require. Through that, the patient would feel that they are being taken care of. A nurse can let a patient know that they are actively listening through, maintain eye contact, repeating back to what the patient has requested, and nodding when a patient is speaking to portray that they are understanding.

Non-Verbal Communication

The way a person engages in non-verbal communication is diverse. It is the way through which communication flows via listening, looking, moving, and reacting while a conversation is ongoing. It is a powerful way of ensuring communication flows between a nurse and a patient. It mostly entails the participants of a conversation to look.

When a nurse meets with a patient or a doctor, they should be looking at the facial expressions or whether there is a change in tone. They should be able to look and check whether the others are smiling or even how they appear. They should look if they are relaxed and comfortable during their conversation. They need to recognize that the patients are looking at them in the same manner (Gault, Shapcott, Luthi & Reid, 2016). A patient would get the wrong impression if a nurse walked over to them to provide care while holding hands, with a sour-looking face and having a harsh tone.

They would feel as if they are unwanted and that the healthcare workers do not care about what they are going through. A nurse should have a friendly tone, voice, and face to give the correct communication impression to the patients. The appearance and how a nurse dresses also occur to be a crucial part of non-verbal communication. The patients would trust and feel secure to a nurse who is neat and professionally-dressed.

Inspired Trust

The ability to inspire, win, and gain someone's trust depends on the capability to urge them via communication. The nursing profession revolves around trustworthiness as its roots rely on how a nurse influences a patient while caring for them. Due to this, it is essential to build relationships and close connections between the nurses and the patients. For every relationship to be initiated, trust has to be incorporated. Trust is critical to every health care setting because it determines how the patients the nurses care about perceive about them.

They would be able to ignore the information concerning their situation if they do not trust the nurses (Arnold & Boggs, 2019). Through this, they would be the ones to be negatively affected, hence worsening the nursing effort to be applied. In the worst-case scenario, failure to trust the nurses would be the borderline between death and life for the patients. Also, trust must be built among the nursing teams. Trust strengthens the relationship among the colleagues, and it would bring unity in the health care setting. The ones would be advantaged after this would be the patients.

Conclusion

As observed, there are diverse types of communication involved in nursing. Each type is critical and plays a significant role in ensuring that patients are taken good care of for a healthy outcome. Communication is among the essential aspects of the nursing field, and therefore, the nurses should be aware of each type of communication.

References

Gault, I., Shapcott, J., Luthi, A., & Reid, G. (2016). Communication in nursing and healthcare: a guide for compassionate practice. Sage. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=uNYQDQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=importance+of+communication+in+nursing&ots=k0_UdaMINJ&sig=HzT5mWVQLtDC58Qx9ciW911MSfU

Beauvais, A. M., Özbas, A. A., & Wheeler, K. (2019). End-of-life psychodrama: Influencing nursing students' communication skills, attitudes, emotional intelligence and self-reflection. Journal of Psychiatric Nursing/Psikiyatri Hemsireleri Dernegi, 10(2). https://www.journalagent.com/z4/download_fulltext.asp?pdir=phd&ppdf=2&plng=tur&un=PHD-96636

Arnold, E. C., & Boggs, K. U. (2019). Interpersonal Relationships E-Book: Professional Communication Skills for Nurses. Elsevier Health Sciences. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=XC2GDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=communication+skills+in+nursing&ots=NpZo6YTNQQ&sig=Gxtzb-8zTVwdkqwnJiYwRpC6eBE