The quality of communication in healthcare has an important impact on patient-healthcare relationships, patient satisfaction after receiving care, and patient safety during the process of care. Although communication between the patient and the care members are natural element of diagnosis and treatment, it is not easy to define or scientifically measure it. Therapeutic communication is one key I learned to utilized during the period of my clinical days.
To better serve my patients, I made use of active listening and making face to face contact when communicating. On my third week of clinical, my assigned patient gave me some experience I think I can use as I move on in my study to become a nurse. Over this period, we were not assigned to many patients but to one patient to better take good care of the patient. I had the opportunity to listen to my patient about the knowledge he had of his disease and some steps he has been taken to manage the disease. For this specific patient, I can say he was very intelligent about his condition as compared to the others I had over subsequent times. Actively listening to my patients helps me to decide what kind of message they need during their care. As my goal being patient centered, I spend all the time being with my patient to better know them and help serve when necessary. Empathy was made use of to encourage my patient to speak about their health concern and open up about any issue that can hinder their healing. Another improvement I made during my clinical experience was incorporating the patient education skills learned in seminar to look up for information on one source when my patient requires some kind of teaching during their hospital stay.
Perfectionism come by continually practicing what has been learned. Throughout the semester, I have learned to improve on my skills content and increase in how to therapeutically communicate with my patients. There were also circumstances where I was also faced with challenges in my schedule. Through the action of Stop, Think, Act, and Review I overcame the situations. To speak of the areas where I still need growth in the future in my practice, first, I will talk about limiting too much detail when communicating with my patients. I feel like I put too much information that might be less important to my patients. Limiting some unneeded information can give me some additional time to focus on other priority that can help other patient. Yes, spending more time with my patient is necessary but when assigned to more patient in the future I can limit those and work on other patient.