Issue 1.
When the nurse first approached the patient during the orientation phase, she did not identify herself, establish her qualifications or role in the patient’s treatment, and in particularly, she did not greet the patient by her preferred name. This was seen when she walked into the room and unprofessionally addressed the patient by; “Mandy”. To this, the patient uncomfortably proceeded to correct her name to be “Sandra” and yet even after this correction, the nurse chose to call her “Sandy” instead, which violated the patient’s right to choose her preferred name. It is essential that this first level of information is correctly gathered and implemented as it is one of the key steps in building rapport and trust if one wants to form …show more content…
Talking about the nurse’s weekend in a clinical setting also severely violated her boundaries by over disclosing her personal information instead of solely treating the patient (Levett-Jones 2018). Even though sharing person information can be effective in showing empathy and realness to the patient to decrease their anxiety (Simon 2017), in this case, the information which was shared did not aid in the patient’s wellbeing or clinical treatment.
Instead, the nurse should have been aware of her boundaries and kept within them to maintain professionality, respect and trust. By only addressing relevant information key to Sandra’s treatment, she would have avoided this boundary crossing which would have thus prevented the patient-nurse relationship from being affected. Once affected, the relationship between them may have also been irreversibly damaged (Simon 2017). Furthermore, the nurse should have been consistently psychologically self-aware (ie empathetic) of how any events occurring outside the healthcare setting could have affected her wellbeing (Cooklin, Lucas, Strazdins, Westrupp, Giallo, Canterford & Nicholson 2013). For instance, the patient could have been experiencing maternal separation anxiety which could have heightened her feelings of anxiety by being separated from her two children (Cooklin et al. 2013), and instead of the nurse focussing on these underlying issues, she chose to reverse the patient-nurse role and focus on …show more content…
Regardless, the nurse bluntly bringing up a past relationship of the patient in this clinical setting directly breached her professionalism and majorly disregarded the patient’s dignity towards her family. It subjected the patient to an awkward situation and in respect to the ‘Nursing Professional Standards of Practice and Behaviour for Nurses and Midwives’, the nurse thus failed to promote necessary professionalism and trust which is a key theme to this practice (NMBA 2018). More specifically, the nurse failed to comply to Standard 2 of purposely engaging in a therapeutic and professional relationship (NMBA