Nursing Communication Practice

Communication and Nursing Practice

• Communication is a lifelong learning process that maintains effective relationships within the entire sphere of professional practice and meets legal, ethical, and clinical standards of care.
• Caring relationships are at the core of nursing, and being able to relate to others is important for interpersonal communication.
• Therapeutic communication occurs within a healing relationship between a nurse and patient.
• Developing communication skills involves critical thinking and clinical judgment, which helps overcome perceptual biases or stereotypes that interfere with accurately perceiving and interpreting messages from others.
• There are different levels of communication, including intrapersonal, interpersonal, small-group, public, and electronic communication.

Elements of the Communication Process

• The circular transactional model of communication involves the referent, sender and receiver, message, channels, feedback, interpersonal values, and environment.

Forms of Communication

• Verbal communication involves vocabulary, denotative and connotative meaning, pacing, intonation, clarity, brevity, timing, and relevance.
• Nonverbal communication includes personal appearance, posture and gait, facial expression, eye contact, gestures, sounds, territoriality, and personal space, as well as metacommunication.

Professional Nursing Relationships

• Nurse-patient caring relationships, motivational interviewing, nurse-family relationships, nurse-health care team relationships, and nurse-community relationships are all important.
• Lateral violence can occur in nurse-health care team relationships.

Elements of Professional Communication

• Professional communication involves courtesy, the use of names, trustworthiness, autonomy and responsibility, and assertiveness.

Nursing Process

• The nursing process involves assessment, which includes considering the patient's perspective, environmental factors, physical and emotional factors, gender, and developmental factors.
• Analysis and nursing diagnosis, planning and outcomes identification, and implementation and evaluation are also part of the nursing process, with a focus on outcomes, setting priorities, teamwork, and collaboration.

Therapeutic Communication Techniques

• Therapeutic communication techniques include active listening, clarifying, sharing observations, focusing, sharing empathy, sharing hope, sharing feelings, using touch, using silence, providing information, paraphrasing, validation, asking relevant questions, summarizing, self-disclosure, and confrontation.

Nontherapeutic Communication Techniques

• Nontherapeutic communication techniques include asking personal questions, giving personal opinions, changing the subject, asking for explanations, defensive responses, automatic responses, false reassurance, sympathy, approval or disapproval, passive or aggressive responses, and arguing.

Special Communication Considerations

• Sociocultural considerations are important in communication, as culture influences thinking, feeling, behaving, and communicating.

This quiz assesses your understanding of communication in nursing practice, including relationships, therapeutic communication, and developing communication skills.