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Communicating Effectively in Nursing

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Communicating Effectively in Nursing

March 1, 2013

Communicating with others in personal and public areas reflects a lot about a person personality. It is part of everyone’s profession regardless if you are working in retail, a restaurant, or the healthcare industry. Communicating effectively can bring positive results when care is provided for patients in many facilities today. Different techniques play a big part when trying to communicate with patients. Therapeutic touch, facial expression, and non-verbal techniques are the factors that helps create meaning. The nursing practice utilizes constant communication between the patient, family, co-workers, and other member’s involved in the plan of care. The important components of successful communication are a sender, a receiver, and the messenger. In the nursing profession a lot of information is sent out to a receiver in a short period of time. When there is a breakdown in the communication this can cause negative outcomes. Many factors can influence how a message is interpreted. Each day nurses have to handoff report to the oncoming nurse at shift change. When important information is not received by the sender, treatments, medications, and interventions are missed. Speak on situations that have occurred where important interventions are missed. Trust is a huge component with patients and their family. When an individual is admitted in the hospital the change in the environment causes a change in their mental status. This mostly occurs in the developmental stage of infants to school-aged- children and the elderly population. Family members become very concerned because of the difference in the patients behavior. When this occurs it is important for medical staff to reorient the patient and develop a trust relationship to ensure they are secure and safe in the new environment. The question remains how

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