Free Nursing Dissertations - Communication Is A Complex Means Of Interaction Between Nurses And People And
Communication is a complex means of interaction between nurses and people and is varied according to the different groups it addresses (Ellis, 1995).
Stein-Parbury (1993) considers listening skills as essential for nurses to be effective when dealing with patients. So many people have post-traumatic stress disorder buried under their medical problems. They've may have gone through war, natural disasters or life threatening incidences. To gain knowledge of a patient's history, nurse needs to facilitate communication. Listening to the patient will bring out these buried problems which will facilitate in correct treatment. It is paradoxical that by increasing their self-awareness, nurses are able to forget about themselves in order to give unconditionally and totally to others (Burnard, 1992).
Stein-Parbury (1993) believes that self-awareness not only leads to the nurses’ complete objectivity when dealing with patients, but also a means to maintain identity. Questioning skills during the assessing the patient will get the nurse information that will be valuable in deciding the treatment path. The questioning needs to be more spontaneous than mechanical. The patient should not be felt interrogated.
Florence Nightingale (1859) wrote a full chapter of her book Notes on Nursing on importance of communication in nursing. She mentioned how isolated and fatigued the patient felt; she described the patient’s longing for someone to whom he could speak and was critical of the way nurses dealt with every situation by telling the patient to cheer up as a means of encouragement. Another great example is of the divine angel of mercy Mother Teresa. She devoted her entire adult life caring for "The dying, the cripple, the mentally ill, the unwanted, and the unloved". She was cleaning, feeding "Jesus in disguise". She was a nun and her acts of deed were par beyond the nursing. But if nurses can learn her kind of devotion to the cause, human suffering will become endurable.
We can conclude that communication is the essence of nursing practice. It is often underrated in the medical curricula and the person training for a nurse often learns only the medical procedures. But the patient’s first point of contact is a nurse. Therefore, it is important that nurses not only have the necessary skills to communicate but recognise the importance of communication skills, as well as the difference between effective and ineffective communication. Poor communication limits the accurate exchange of information between the nurses and patients and perhaps diminishes the probability of treatment. The nurses should incorporate these skills into their own method of communication so that they become normal rather than mechanic.
