The Role of Communication in Nursing

Discuss about the Professional Communication for Nurses.

Effective communication involves the transfer of information from one person to another, through the right. Both the communicator and the recipient play a great role in facilitating effective communication process and in enhancing proper understanding of messages. Poor interpretation of messages may be a great cause of communication failure (Markov & Hazan, 2012). In nursing, communication involves the exchange of messages between two or more individuals. Communication takes various forms such as written communication which takes such forms as text messages and letters, verbal communication where individuals directly and actively engage in the communication process through the word of mouth, and other non-verbal communication such as the use of signals to convey messages. Communication in nursing practices mostly involves nurses and their direct patients and professional skills are of paramount importance in nurturing a conducive nurse/patient relationship. The current advancement and continued evolution of technology have played a great role in facilitating effective communication in the nursing field.

Most communication practices in nursing involve the exchange of information from patients to nurses and vice versa. Patients receive information from patients in matters regarding their signs and symptoms. They are able to describe how they feel and the changes perceived in their bodies after taking certain medications (Wittenberg-Lyles, 2013). This helps nurses to make critical decisions about the diagnosis of the patients, as well as the effectiveness of treatment methods as received by the patient from the nurse. Nurses on the other hand share information with their patients about their treatment methods, dosage prescriptions as well as any precautionary measures that need to be taken into consideration during the treatment period. Other information that nurses may share with their patients may include ways of preventing any related future attacks.

Professional communication in nursing, in general, is very delicate yet critical at the same time. Effective delivery of healthcare and nurse’s services highly depends on professional communication. Examples of nursing areas where communication is highly applied and therefore professionalism in communication highly needed include treatment areas, health promotions, therapy wards, rehabilitation centres, among others. Communication technology in nursing has improved the quality of patient care and also provided a way where health practitioners and patients can be easily educated. The overall nursing exercise is mainly achieved through successful series of dialogues between the nurses and the victims. Professional communication, assisted by the communication technology, enhances nurses with communication skills that display high levels of courtesy, honesty and kindness. Moreover, it enables nurses to successfully communicate with people related to patients such as family members taking care of the patient Professional communication systems are mainly defined by an organization’s culture and codes of ethics. However, effective transfer of communication as needed are supposed to be simple and clear and where written communication applies, the language used is recommended to be formal language that is easy and free from ambiguous and contradicting terms, words and phrases. The key importance of the whole communication process is to facilitate the patient’s understanding of various aspects as they might be addressed in the communication (Mastrototaro, 2015). As a result, communication is termed as ineffective when the patient or any other targeted recipient is not able to interpret the messages conceived in the information and or interprets such messages wrongly thus deriving an incorrect interpretation. Professional communication in nursing basically helps in the expression of messages with simple and clear languages that recipients can comprehend easily. This, in turn, enhances quality communication.

Professional Communication and Communication Technology in Nursing

Listening skills are very essential in the nursing career. Nurses are required to obtain information from their patients, most of which relate to the symptoms experienced by the patients and interpret such information to come up with a constructive edge from which they base their treatment and diagnosis processes (Raphael-Grimm & Zuccarini). The evolution of mobile phones enables nurses to hear from patients who might be receiving medical care from their homes, thus facilitating quality care to such patients. Listening skills enable nurses to get the actual and correct information as communicated to them by patients, which in turn enables them to interpret the communicated information correctly, therefore providing a clear basis for treatment (Sarnikar, Bennett & Gaynor, 2013). When nurses fail to listen effectively, they tend to obtain the incorrect information and in turn make wrong interpretations in relation to patient’s requirements. Treatment of the wrong diagnosis as attributed by wrong interpretation of information between nurses and patients has been a cause for more health complications and even deaths at the worst scenarios (Fagerström, Tuvesson, Axelsson & Nilsson, 2017). Professional listening skills as facilitated by professional communication processes are therefore of paramount necessity if proper treatment methods are to be achieved.

Apart from listening skills, nurses also need to be equipped with strong and quality speaking skills as they are required in their field every day. While nurses interact with numbers of patients every minute, they also interact largely with numbers of health care professionals and providers in different nursing fields. Communication technology today enables nurses to speak and give directions to patients even in their physical absence. While interacting with patients, speaking skills assist nurses to effectively and successfully convey critical messages with clarity and simplicity (Blake, 2008). Patients may come from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds and whatever the matter, nurses are required to speak to them, inquire them about their problems and as well help them out where they can. Moreover, patients interact with patients suffering from various ailments such as hearing problems. They are therefore required to be audible enough, especially when communicating through modern technological methods of communication such as mobile phones (Gartee & Beal, 2012). Professional communication skills help nurses to be effective in the overall communication process between them and their patients.

Healthcare professionals and providers work together with nurses and assist in the provision of various critical services such as preventive services, curative services as well as rehabilitative services. Nurses communicate with these healthcare practitioners and inform them about the symptoms persisting in patients, as well as any other critical information that might be required to be shared between and among them. Nurses use various communication methods, as enabled by the technology such as mobile devices, to communicate with healthcare professionals where need be. When communicating with these practitioners, nurses are required to be brief yet detailed, conveying any necessary information that might be required, while still filtering that information that is not necessarily critical and does not need to be communicated (Mastrototaro, 2015). The current technological communication methods help to save time especially during cases of emergency such as accidents (Markov & Hazan, 2012). Nurses are required to be honest, conveying only the truthful information that will be used in the treatment of the patients. The briefness helps to clear out the important points from the whole collection of information as they might have collected it from patients.

The Importance of Clear Communication in Nursing

Good personal attributes and relationships in the nursing field are described as the overall nurse’s ability to inquire information through questions with moral virtues such as kindness, courtesy and honesty (Peate & Peate, 2012). Nurses are not supposed to ask questions or even communicate with their patients with kind words that do not scare away the patients. Despite the fact that the nurses are able to communicate with patients even without physically availing themselves, they are recommended to uphold their personal interpersonal skills such as courtesy when communicating with the patients (Stein-Parbury, 2017). They should be considerate about the psychological conditions of their patients and should actually be an active source of hope to such patients. They should avoid abusive languages and find better ways to maneuver around sensitive topics and discussions without making the patients feel humiliated or negatively affected. They should be sensitive in their choice of language as this might be a major cause of despair to the patients. When patients ask them sensitive questions about their conditions, they should offer positive answers even when such health statuses seem to be escalating and worsening. This helps to give the patients some hope about life and also boost their recovery potentials.

Communication technology in nursing encourages nurses to observe ethical values and codes as stated in their organizations. Among the most common ethical issues in nursing, fields include honesty and truth-telling. Nurses are expected to share the exact and truthful results relating to patients’ health statuses, especially with their family members as they may inquire. Additionally, nurses should always uphold the confidentiality of the highest level and should never disclose the patient’s personal information to any third parties who may not be directly concerned with the health and personal lives of such patients (McDaniel, 2009). Nurses should also observe the ethical issue of obtaining an informed consent from the direct patient or any related member before carrying out medical procedures unless such a patient is incapacitated.

Communication technology in professional nursing communications faces barriers such as personal barriers which may include language barriers between the nurse and the patient as well as cost barriers where the information technology methods and devices used may be expensive to afford and install.  Other implications of communication technology in nursing include the decreased efficiency in communication processes. Non-verbal communication compliments communication especially in nursing where nurses are supposed to observe the physical signs and symptoms as displayed by their patients (Markov & Hazan, 2012). Most communication technology methods do not account for the necessity of physical contact between the nurses and the patients.

In conclusion, just as communication plays an important role in our lives, communication technology in professional communication for nurses plays a very critical role in the nursing field. The quality of communication directly influences the quality of medical services that nurses offer in health centres (Kraszewski & McEwen, 2010). Communication technology in nursing has greatly improved the quality of services offered by nurses especially by making communication more accessible and readily available. Communication skills such as listening and speaking skills enable nurses to communicate effectively with their parties. The total efficiency of services offered by health officers has been improved by communication technology. Patients do not longer need to make frequent visits to the hospitals to receive some little directions like it was before (Blake, 2008). Communication technology in professional communication has, therefore, facilitated the provision of quality healthcare services to patients.

References

Blake, H. (2008). Mobile phone technology in chronic disease management. Nursing Standard (through 2013), 23(12), 43.

Fagerström, C., Tuvesson, H., Axelsson, L., & Nilsson, L. (2017). The role of ICT in nursing practice: an integrative literature review of the Swedish context. Scandinavian journal of caring sciences, 31(3), 434-448.

Gartee, R., & Beal, S. (2012). Electronic health records and nursing. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson, 153-276.

Kraszewski, S., & McEwen, A. (2010). Communication skills for adult nurses. Maidenhead: Open University Press, 45-78.

Markov, M., & Hazan, A. (2012). Advances in Communication Technology: Implications for New Nursing Skills. Journal Of Pediatric Nursing, 27(5), 591-593. doi: 10.1016/j.pedn.2012.07.004

Mastrototaro, A. (2015). The Art of Communication in Nursing and Health Care. Issues In Mental Health Nursing, 36(7), 566-566. doi: 10.3109/01612840.2015.1053773

McDaniel, J. (2009). Advances in Information Technology and Communication in Health. Amsterdam: IOS Press, 45-133.

Peate, I., & Peate, I. (2012). The student’s guide to becoming a nurse. Chichester, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell (pp. 45-184).

Raphael-Grimm, T., & In Zuccarini, M. (2015). The art of communication in nursing and health care: An interdisciplinary approach, 86-311.

Sarnikar, S., Bennett, D., & Gaynor, M. (2013). Cases on healthcare information technology for patient care management. Hershey, PA: Medical Information Science Reference, (pp. 63-247).

Stein-Parbury, J. (2017).Patient and person: Interpersonal skills in nursing, (pp. 52-177).

Wittenberg-Lyles, E. (2013). Communication in palliative nursing. New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 78-173.