Table of Contents

Description of the Event

Analysis of Communication Event

Inference and Conclusion

Communication is an important aspect of any workplace. In a profession such as nursing which face high pressure situations and the lives of people at stake, it is essential to maintain a form of communication which is transparent, consistent and essential to function in such a high functioning environment at all times. Nurses have to be clear with how they perceive such situations and how they will aim to work in coordination in any given situation or any given point of time (Kourkouta & Papathanasiou, 2014). This report details one such incident where I had to face such issues and had to ensure that the communication is taken care of at all times, and how I dealt with such a situation and helped everyone who is a part of it.

Description of the Event

This happened when I was a nursing resident at one of the elderly healthcare centres. I was working with a very good and efficient team and some of the team members were really experienced and helped me a lot. The entire vibe of the healthcare centre was really good. The patients were taken care of really well and overall the system was really smooth.

It was a multi-cultural centre where patients of all ethnicity were present (Sellers, Moss, Calzone, & Abdallah, 2016). I liked this place a lot because of this reason as I felt that everyone should be treated equally and every patient should enjoy their time, especially when it is ‘the-end-of-life’ care that they are receiving. These things in Australia are quite huge and thus, it is the responsibility of the doctor as well to ensure that they are able to take care of the patients without having any issues of language or ethnicity come in between them. Some patients and their family do not know English and thus, it becomes even more difficult to manage them. However, with time, all the nurses there, understand the way out with the patients and are able to serve them properly. The patients have to be treated really well and have to be shown the right amount of concern too (Terezam, Reis-Queiroz, & Hoga, 2017).

In this event, I was taking care of one such patient from Syria. The patient was a 60-year-old female who was in partial paralyses from the left side of her body. She constantly needed someone to help her with her day to day needs and chores. Initially, it was very difficult to take care of her as she only spoke Arabic and no other language while we have provisions for nurses who are multi-lingual, at that time of the year we were so packed and we did not have a nurse who could speak Arabic at all. We tried communicating to her family about the issues and if they could tell us about her medical history, however, they too were not fluent or well versed in English (Rani, 2016).

One such day, the old lady's son came to visit her. He could speak a little English. One of my senior nurses was talking to him so that they could extract information on the regular issues the mother faces and how we have devised a plan to help her (Rittle, 2015). We tried everything so that we make the entire thing really clear to him, without missing out on any information or without giving in any false information or something that could get lost in translation. I observed that the senior nurses they're tried hard to explain him but since he was not s good with English, it was tough. I could see the senior nurses losing their patience and randomly cracking jokes on him. I felt really bad about this situation as I felt it was not his fault and that being the senior nurses of such a prestige hospice care facility, they should deal with the situation in a better manner.

Analysis of Communication Event

After analysing the above event, I understood that there are two important aspects of communication that were lacking here; empathy and willingness. Nurses have to understand that when they work with such cases it is important to be open minded and accepting of the fact that they may have patients who are not perfect and will obviously need extra attention.

According to Peplau’s Interpersonal relationship theory of nursing “Communication that occurs in this context involves complex factors such as environment, in addition to attitudes, practices and beliefs in the dominant culture. Peplau’s interpersonal relations theory defines four stages of the relationship that achieve a common goal: orientation, phase identification, exploitation and resolution” (Neese, 2016). The senior nurses should have implemented this four stage model to ensure that they are able to better communicate to the family about the situation of the person at all times and ensure that the information that they wish to share comes across clearly to everyone.

Further, empathy is another essential factor which was missing from this entire conversation. I felt that senior nurses should understand the situation of the patient and her family, and should have made better arrangements (Rehman, 2012). The lack of willingness to help the patient was quite apparent. It is very easy and affordable to hire a translator or hire a nurse on contract as well.

Later on, I suggested to all these nurses what I felt they could have done better and how they could have improved the overall experience of the patient without having them feel at fault. The overall situation was later taken into account and it was established that all the patients will now be provided with an interpreter if the case requires to be so (Maccabe, 2018). This services will be rolled out initially with an interpreter, later, multi-lingual nurses will be hired at all times.

Inference and Conclusion

From the above given event and its analysis, we can conclude that language should never be taken as a barrier to communication but rather as a challenge. In a profession such as nursing, which has high pressure situations and the lives of people at stake, it is essential to maintain a form of communication which is transparent, consistent and essential (Fakhr-Movahedi & Rahnavard, 2016).This one event that I personally was a part of taught me how it is important to be empathetic. Empathy plays an important role in communication and it is important to maintain it all times for better and improved communication practices.

The above mentioned theory of Peplau’s Interpersonal relationship can be really helpful as it can help in giving nurses a structure to follow when dealing with tough clients and to ensure that they do not create such mistakes in the future (Jeffrey, 2017). Every patient is important and they should not be victims of prejudice because of their differences at any point in time.

This event had a lot of impact on me as I could feel really bad for the patient. Every now and then, as a nurse I come across such situations where patients are helpless and cannot receive quality care simply because they cannot communicate. This made me feel the importance of communication and empathy that needs to be inculcated in the nurses. As nurses we are the first points of contact and it is important that we are trained and prepared for such situations.

References

Fakhr-Movahedi, A., & Rahnavard, Z. (2016). Exploring Nurse’s Communicative Role in Nurse-Patient Relations: A Qualitative Study. J Caring Sci.

Jeffrey, D. (2017). Empathy, sympathy and compassion in healthcare: Is there a problem? Is there a difference? Does it matter? Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.

Kourkouta, L., & Papathanasiou, I. V. (2014). Communication in Nursing Practice. Mater Sociomed, 6(1).

Mccabe, C. (n.d.). Nurse-patient communication: An exploration of patients' experiences. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 13(1).

Neese, B. (2016). Effective Communication in Nursing: Theory and Best Practices. Retrieved from http://blog.diversitynursing.com/blog/effective-communication-in-nursing-theory-and-best-practices#:~:text=Peplau's%20Interpersonal%20Relations%20Theory,beliefs%20in%20the%20dominant%20culture.

Rani, D. K. (2016). COMMUNICATION BARRIERS IN NURSING. JOURNAL OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE, 3(2).

Rehman, M. (2012). Empathy and quality of care. Br J Gen Pract.

Rittle, C. (2015). Multicultural Nursing: Providing Better Employee Care. Workplace Health & Safety, 63(12).

Sellers, S. L., Moss, M. E., Calzone, K., & Abdallah, K. E. (2016). Nurses’ Use of Race in Clinical Decision Making. J Nurs Scholarsh, 48(6).

Terezam, R., Reis-Queiroz, J., & Hoga, L. (2017). The importance of empathy in health and nursing care. Revista brasileira de enfermagem, 70(3).

Remember, at the center of any academic work, lies clarity and evidence. Should you need further assistance, do look up to our Nursing Assignment Help

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