Nursing is among the professions where humanity remains integral in spite of technological advancements. Two forms of communication remain paramount to the practice of nursing. The first is communication between the patient and the nurse while the second is interdisciplinary communication between the nurse and other healthcare officers. The efficacy and effectiveness of a nurse both in care and other professional duties are inter alia predicated on proper communication skills (Paget et al., 2011) . It is on this basis that the profession has developed a variety of principles and practices that government communication with the patient and colleagues.
Question One
Among the principles developed are the seven principles of patient-clinician communication. Mutual respect is the first principles and relates to the nurse and patient valuing each other’s input within the conversation (Paget et al., 2011) . Harmonized goals relate to the nurse and the patient working in tandem , not against, each other. The third principle is creation of a supportive environment and relates to both parties ensuring they nurture a secure environment to freely share ideas. The fourth entails the professional becoming an appropriate decision-making partner which involves the patient being made to understand that the nurse is both competent and having the interests of the patient at heart. The fifth principle relates to using the right information and entails using the best, most relevant, and most up to date information. The sixth combines transparency and full disclosure between the patient and the clinician (Paget et al., 2011) . Finally, there is continuous learning which entails the clinician always seeking to better the best in patient communication.
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Question two
I apply mutual respect by ensuring that the patient knows that I take what they say seriously, even when it may not make sense. Harmonized goals come into play when I seek to ensure that I understand what the patient wants and the patients understand my intentions. Thirdly, I use statements like “feel free to share” and “I understand” to encourage a supportive environment for communication. Appropriate decision-making partners come into play when dealing with parents of child patients by seeking to reassure them that their loved ones are in good hands. Under having the right information, I thoroughly research on each of my patient’s situations before I enter into discussions with them, more so when they have a hard decision to make. On the sixth principle, I ensure that at the earliest possible moment, I provide the necessary information to the patient and loved ones. Finally, regarding continuous learning, I keep on learning how different cultural issues affect patients and their loved ones so as to be able to handle them better.
Question three
The three strategies being used to improve interdisciplinary communication include “ team briefing and debriefing” (Gluyas, 2015, P. 54) which involves giving of formal instructions at the beginning of a task and collecting views after the end of the task. Structured communication tools is another strategy that involves having uniform communication gadgets and methods within the team. Finally, there is the checklists and read-back protocols which eliminates communication errors by structuring communication and providing for cross-checks (Gluyas, 2015) .
Question Four
My area of practice is the emergency room where there is a high patient turnover with the patients having to be expeditiously processed and forwarded to other professionals for specialized services. Further, teams made up of different professionals are formed sporadically to handle issues as and when they arise. Team briefing and debriefing is one of the most useful strategies for my area of practice. When a team is formed, for example, to handle oncoming traffic accident casualties, the members huddle together for briefing, which includes sharing duties and strategizing. Before the team is disbanded after the specialized duties are accomplished, the team comes together briefly to reflect on the duty and canvass on matters that arose within it.
Question Five
Four ethical principles apply in nurse-patient communication. The first is autonomy, which relates to the professional empowering and allowing the patient to make health care decisions. The second is justice and relates to ensuring that the fundamental rights of the patient as a human being are respected and protected. Another ethics principle is beneficence and relates to ensuring that all benefits that ought to be available for the patient are availed. Finally, there is non-maleficence which relates to the professional ensuring that communication commissions and omission do not result in any harm to the patient (Bhanji et al., 2013).
Question Six
Ethics does not just apply when the professional is communicating with the patient as it also applies when the professionals are communicating with one another more so at a multi-disciplinary level. The ethical obligation of the professional to the patient also extends to ensuring proper, full, effective, and relevant communication with other professionals. If a professional handles a patient using the wrong or incomplete information from another professional, chances of the patient getting harmed are heightened (Bhanji et al., 2013). It is on this basis that ethics are important in interdisciplinary communication among healthcare professionals.
Conclusion
The foregoing reflects the fundamental importance of proper communication, principles of communication, and ethics of communication in nursing. Further, it shows that good communication transcends both the communication between a nurse and a patient and also the communication between different professionals in the healthcare profession. Being able to communicate properly with the patient and other professionals is thus an integral part of competence in practice at a clinical level.
References
Bhanji, S. M. (2013). Health care ethics. Journal of Clinical Research and Bioethics, 4 (1), 142. doi : 10.4172/2155-9627.1000142
Gluyas H (2015) Effective communication and teamwork promotes patient safety. Nursing Standard, 29( 49), 50-57.
Paget, L., Han, P., Nedza, S., Kurtz, P., Racine, E., Russell, S., & Von Kohorn, I. (2011). Patient-clinician communication: Basic principles and expectations. Washington, DC: IOM Working Group Report, Institute of Medicine
