Communication Even Analysis
This report is to reflect on a particular event that occurred during my placement at a general hospital. The placement afforded me a firsthand experience of the importance of communication skills in nursing practice. Effective communication is an essential component of medical practice which improves the quality of treatment given to patients. It is an integral part of Hippocratic medicine, and it not only inspires a recovery-oriented medical practice but also establishes a trusting patient-care provider relationship. (Kourkota & Papathanasiou 2014 ). It is the best tool for calming an intense atmosphere in a healthcare environment, achieving the full cooperation of the patients, and aiding a rapid recovery. Such was my experience with a 43-year-old psychiatrist-patient at the hospital where I had my placement. Jane was a widow, a mother of two children, ages ten and eight. Jane had irritability, restlessness, and some other symptoms of clinical depression. She had spent about five weeks at the hospital, and her condition was getting back to normal. However, a few days to the night I had interaction with her, she had been showing some signs of relapse in her recovery process.
Suddenly, Jane stopped taking her medications, started displaying aggression at people around her and preferred to be all alone. I became interested in Jane’s case and was willing to help her the best possible way I could. To have a full understanding of her condition, I approached the resident nurse to know more about Jane’s health challenge. According to the information I gathered, Jane had a happy life with her husband and two children until she lost her husband in a car crash a few months before her admission at the hospital. The death came as a shock to her. Since then, the more she tried to move on and concentrate on raising her children, the more difficult it was for her. So, she resulted in alcohol to help her forget her sorrow. After a few weeks into...
Soon after, her new lifestyle started affecting her performance at work and later made her lose her job. Being bereaved and experiencing a job loss in quick succession was too much for Jane to bear and the overall effects led to depression.
Having known the cause of her health condition, I became more determined to speak to her. I went into her ward and met her soliloquising as she always did. Then I moved close to her and sat on the chair beside her bed....…during our conversation and my entire stay at the hospital, Jane put on a smiling face as she talked about her children. This made me realise that she had not completely given up on living, after all. Therefore, it presented me the opportunity of letting her see more reason while she should overcome her depressive state. Throughout our conversation, I made use of body language by keeping eyes contact to assure her that I was wholeheartedly listening, and periodically gesturing her with hand movement to encourage her to speak on anytime she appeared to be holding back midway in her speech.
The encounter with Jane enlightened me about the value of person-centred care and the efficacy of effective communication in medical practice. Through the experience, I practically learnt to avoid generalisation and treat every case differently in my nursing practice. Moreover, I have also discovered that professionals in medical practice should always be ready to influence an atmosphere of trust and regard at all times in their discharge of duty. The art of effective communication skills will always be one of the determinants of patient satisfaction in health service. (Chandra, Mohammadnezhad & Ward 2018, p.3). Empathy, respect, and compassion are, therefore, fundamental aspects of nursing practice which no healthcare provider should neglect when dealing with patients.
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