What Is The Importance Of Communication In Nursing?

Communication is an important aspect of human life as it helps us make sense of the world around us. Describe as a two-way interaction process, it usually involves two or more people who are engaged in a verbal, non-verbal, non-face-to-face, or face-to-face discussion. In nursing especially, communication is essential for nurses so that they can talk to the patients and offer them better healthcare services. This enables them to provide their patients with safe, effective, and timely care. None of this would be possible until you can effectively communicate with your patient.

At this point, you may even begin to wonder that since nurses are eventually going to make decisions about the patient’s healthcare themselves, what is the purpose of communicating with the patient anyway? Why don’t we just mind our own business and now get in the nurse’s way? Well, we can tell you that some people want nothing more than to get their job done and go home. Well, nurses are not such people. As a nurse, you cannot just go into the patient’s ward, read their chart, give them medicines, and move on. You will have to talk to people of different educational, cultural, and social backgrounds. Your communication skills need to have a professional aspect to them, and at the same time, you need to be empathetic and caring as well. This is why communication plays a major role in nursing. Our assignment help service professionals can explain this to you in greater detail. externals factors that influence communication in nursing

The Two Major Theories Of Communication

Broadly speaking there are two fundamental theories of communication that nurses should be aware of: The first one is Peplau’s Interpersonal Relations Theory- The theory primarily focuses on the relationship that develops between a patient and their nurse and how it can have affected the patient’s therapeutic care. Communicating in such a situation can become complex as you have to take care of different factors like the patient’s attitude, your environment, the current health practices of the patient, etc. There are four major stages in this relationship:

Orientation- The is the first step of the association between a patient and their nurse. This is where the treatment begins, and the patient starts asking questions about their situation. The patient trusts you to deliver safe, and high-quality health services but also take care of their emotional needs by being truthful about their health.
Identification- The nurse and the patient work together to form a bond that will help them understand each other better, accept each other’s role in the process of getting better, and ultimately build a truthful relationship between them.
Exploitation- Our nursing assignment writers explain that this is where things might get a little tricky as the patient sometimes exploits their nurse-patient relationship to meet their treatment goals. However, effective communication skills will help a nurse keep the treatment on track without any exploitation.
Resolution- Finally comes the last stage where the needs of the patient get fulfilled because of proper communication. The patient has fully recovered and is ready to end their relationship with the nurse.

The second one is the Dyadic Interpersonal Communication Model- This model revolves around dynamic interactions that occur between two people:

This model of communication is simple as it involves a sender and a recipient who is based in the middle of different external factors like emotional elements, perception, physical components, and attitude. This model aims to assess how these factors can alter the way the message is delivered and the message itself.
The sender encodes the information which can be decoded by the receiver. The recipient must also identify the message, process the information, and act upon it accordingly. The dyadic interpersonal communication model identifies the need for strong and clear communication while examining the factors that may affect said communication.

Essentially, the nurse has to focus on providing individual care to everyone. For this, it is vital that the patient feels important, which is only possible when the nurse communicated with the patient successfully. Additionally, when a patient feels that they are receiving your full attention, they will be more receptive to suggestions about the treatment and be clear with you about their needs and symptoms. This will help you improve your nursing practice. If you feel like you are stuck on any of these theories and need some nursing assignment help, we are available round-the-clock to help you out.

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