Personal Narrative: A Career As A Professional Nurse

During my visit to the Trenton Psychiatric Hospital I met a very pleasant patient at the recreational area, there was a pool table so I asked him to join me in a game to which he agreed. While playing he told me about how he had been in the hospital for several months but was a few weeks away from being discharged, we talked about his depression and anxiety, about his life and plans for the future, at the end, our interaction seemed to raise his spirits. It really helped me that we covered therapeutic communication not so long ago in lab and that same morning in pre-conference as well, so I got to apply the paraphrasing, active listening, self-disclosure, humor and active listening. Generally, I struggle in creating relationships with others and the language barrier makes things even worse. It’s kind of hard to make a person open up to tell you about his life and such, even more when this person is someone you have never met before, However, I do realize that as a nurse I will meet new people all the time and being able to stablish a therapeutic relationship is important, so I need to boost my relationship skills to become a better nurse. This experience taught me that getting to know someone is easier when there is a medium both parties enjoy, in …show more content…
The therapist would encourage the patients to share their stories and thoughts about their own paintings and got to play some Led Zeppelin as the patients wanted. I did not get to say much unlike last time, since remaining silent seemed to be the better choice to allow patients to just keep sharing while the rest just would just listen. Overall, I believe the experience gave me a better understanding of the areas I need to improve to become a better nurse and meet the needs of the patient, also how to differentiate between therapeutic communications from a social