Nurses Interpersonal Skills
For nurses, healthcare is something they do all day everyday. For patients, it is something new and scary.
In order to be a good nurse, it is important that the nurse remembers this and is able to empathise with the patient. For this to be achieved, the nurse must be able to communicate effectively with his or her patient, understand their concerns and help the patient cope with these fears. They must be able to listen and reassure anxious family members, who wish to pass on their concerns, and be able to use their judgement about how to act on these.
A major role of the nurse is communicating with patients and their families and carers. It is essential that the nurse is able to communicate effectively in a wide range of scenarios with different people. It is often the nurse who, whilst on ward round, will have to communicate with other team members using medical jargon, but to whom the patient will often turn and ask for an explanation of what is said.
In order to be able to effectively talk to people, it is important that the nurse is able to listen well. Listening to a patient gives a clue about how the patient is feeling. Likewise, the nurse must be able to pick up on the patient's feelings when they are not communicating them. The nurse must be able to recognise when the patient is scared, anxious or feeling alone.
The nurse must have the ability to communicate with a whole section of society, from young people right up to the very elderly, from people who have no understanding or insight into what is happening to them to the very knowledgeable, from people who speak fluent English, to those who speak not a word of it and for whom, the most the nurse can do without a translator, is offer a friendly smile, holding a patient's hand, or improvising sign language.
The nurse must also be confident in his or her knowledge and be able to use this confidence to advocate for their patient. Being a patient is a vulnerable place to be. Other people, be it nurses, doctors or pharmacists, know more than the patient about what is going on and whether it is going well or not, and therefore the patient is trusting these professionals to do their best. It is important that the nurse is able to speak up for his or her patient, and ensure that their best interests are at the heart of decisions being made by other team members.
Nurses are the professionals who spend the most time with their patients. They are the ones to whom patients turn when they are scared, unhappy, uncomfortable or in need of a friend. It is nurses they trust with their sensitive information, their wishes about resuscitation or their fears about going home.
In order to provide patients with the care they expect and deserve, nurses not only need excellent clinical skills and knowledge, but they must have impeccable interpersonal skills.
