Nurse-Patient Communication Skills

Analysis of Communication Skills Communication is an essential skill a nurse must have in order to be successful in understanding and connecting with patients. The ability to utilize therapeutic communication techniques while interacting with patients to build a strong foundation for the nurse-patient relationship is also very crucial. Therapeutic communication is important for the nurse because, “Nurses who are competent, honest, skilled communicators are viewed as effective and compassionate caregivers” (Taylor, Lillis, and Lynn, 2015, p. 461). In order to practice communication skills, an interview was conducted between the student nurse and an individual with a health concern, who will be referred to as the patient. The interview was voice …show more content…
The interviewer found that she was not allowing the conversation to flow due to having an idea in mind of what she was going to ask next, regardless of what the patient may be saying at the moment. Although the questions asked were relevant to what was being said, it would have improved the communication if she would have listened closer to what the patient was really saying and then encouraging them to elaborate on the topic. This may tend to happen when referencing a list of questions that had been prepared prior to the interview taking place. Communication should allow for the patient to take the lead and for the nurse to be flexible (Taylor, 2015, p.464). The interviewer was not flexible when she was focusing on the questions she had lined up, ultimately interfering with the interview process. It is important to let the patient respond in a manner that is their own, no matter what outline it may follow (Jarvis, 2015, …show more content…
For example, the use of open and closed-ended questions is a technique that is commonly used by nurses during the interview with the patient. The open-ended question technique is preferred to allow the patient to express themselves and it promotes a longer answer compared to a closed question. During the recorded interview, the majority of the questions asked were open-ended questions. In addition, there were a lot of clarifying questions. The clarifying questions were commonly used as a means of making sure that both people were on the same page. It may have improved the interview if more reflexive and directing questions were asked in place of some of the clarifying questions. By adding more of these types of questions, information would have been shared by the patient that may have lead to the discovery of new important topics. The overuse of clarifying questions in some circumstances leads to a patient response of agreement of the information but no elaboration, although at times it did during the recorded