Analyzing Communication Scenarios In Nursing: Communication Frameworks And Nursing Tools

Identification of the concepts, communication framework, and nursing tools

The following write-up uses Scenario 2 that involves a first-year student on clinical placement in an aged care facility. The student is left alone with a 92-year-old female who has vascular dementia and the student has to help her take a shower. This paper applies the concept of person-centred care and how to manage aggression through the use of effective communication during clinical patient handover among resident nurses in aged care unit and how to manage communication situation like in the mentioned scenario. The paper also explores the communication concept in person-centred care and how to address ineffective communication and nursing communication tools which need improvement in aged care facility during the patient clinical handover (Sonntag et al., 2016). Today patients’ safety is a fundamental priority for healthcare facilities and effective communication between resident nurses in aged care unit is very important in ensuring smooth clinical handover. 

Identification of the concepts, communication framework, and nursing tools The communication concept in the case study is person-centred care. It involves a patient in a care facility that needs effective communicated to enhance the provision of quality care. The communication framework, on the other hand, includes interaction with the patient, establishment of the intention for engagement, decision on the interventions to be used, assessment the interventions impact and evaluation of the implications as a result of information obtained and taking actions accordingly (Sonntag et al., 2016). The common useful nurse communication tools applicable in this scenario would include Charting Book, Handheld Charting Tools, and verbal communication (Tobiano, Whitty, Bucknall, & Chaboyer, 2017). These nurse communications are applicable in scenario 2 in the following ways: The Handheld Charting tools help AIN share information electronically with the nursing student on placement without having to shame them in front of the patient. This small device would be used to charting clarification on patient information like behaviour change before attending to her shower to avoid confusing or forgetting critical information (Sonntag et al., 2016). On the other side in this scenario, AIN could apply verbal communication as a nursing tool to brief on how to handle patients shower session as well as updates on the patient moods (Tobiano, Whitty, Bucknall, & Chaboyer, 2017). The other tool most applicable would be the charting book which would help in communicating both the mental and physical status of the patient.
 

The most ineffective communication statement in this scenario is where the AIN says “You’ve got it all wrong; just stop what you’re doing! You are making her feel scared”. There is also ineffective communication where the AIN discredits his assistant.  He states in the scenario that, “Having a student is such a pain and I don’t have time to deal with your incompetence!” this is ineffective because nurses should apply the right nurse communication tools to convey their message to other nurses about the patients handling care. For the delivery of high quality, and safe patient care effective communication and teamwork is important (Masters, 2018). Due to the complexity of medical care as well as inborn limitation in human performance it becomes necessary to have standardized communication tools for nurses, a creation of an environment where individuals can speak to express their concerns, and sharing of common ‘‘critical language’’ to inform other nurses of patients threatening conditions.  In this scenario this effort has not been recognized and this may not only lead to the nursing student felling isolated, rejected and threatened career wise but also cause inadvertent patient harm.  Many scholars agree that adapting standardized tools and behaviors is an effective approach that enhances teamwork reduction of risks (Riley, 2015). According to Ammouri et al., (2015), Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations found that over 70% of sentinel events are as a result of communication failure (Slade, Murray, Pun & Eggins, 2019). This means that, AIN may have not communicated the information to the nursing student and has very poor communication students. Tobiano, Whitty, Bucknall& Chaboyer, (2017) states that, “Barriers to bedside handover were determined to relate to individual nurse factors, patient factors, social, political and legal factors, and guideline factors”.
 

The concept of person-centred care entails allowing a patient to make informed choices, respecting their wishes, and ensuring that patients have used healthcare and social services as equal partners when planning, monitoring and developing care to meet medical needs (Riley, 2015). On the other hand, the nurse communication tool used in the scenario needs to be improved by effectively using his verbal communication tool to help improve patients care.

Analysis of the Communication Scenario

The communication framework that is the most effective tool when interacting with the patients, determining useful interventions, examining the impacts of interventions and lastly evaluating the implications of  information acquired and applying it as per requirement (Masters, 2018).

The communication framework also include interaction with patients, establishment of intention for interaction, decision on the interventions to be adopted, assessment on the impact of interventions and evaluation of implications of the subsequent information and taking the action accordingly(Sonntag et al., 2016).

This concept can help improve communication since it is a significant factor in patients’ complaints and satisfaction where patient interact freely with their health providers. The nursing students can, therefore, engage the patient as the partner by interacting with them and knowing how they needed to be cared for (Evans, Eades& Cameron, 2019). This engagement would result in an increased value, and benefit for both patient and the caregiver. A nurse who practices good listening skills and frequently checking in on their patient reduces both their patients’ emotional and physical distress (Shafakhah, Zarshenas, Sharif, & Sarvestani, 2015). In this scenario, the patient requires a nurse to familiarize themselves with them so as to create a good interpersonal relationship (Slade, Murray, Pun & Eggins, 2019). This will make the patient feel comfortable with revealing what they felt was harming them.

On the other hand, the nursing student will need to make a personal connection with the patient. Nurses’ strong interpersonal relationship with patients is dependent on communication and ensures that nurses carry out their jobs easily (Falk, Hopwood & Dahlgren, 2017). For this to happen, nurses can take initiatives like sitting with the patient having a brief conversation, which can raise patient satisfaction scores. A 2017 study showed that there is an improvement in patients’ satisfaction scores from the 9th percentile to 43rd percentile for the nurses who asked to sit next to a patient (Papadopoulos, Shea, Taylor, Pezzella & Foley, 2016).  
 

Conclusion

The case scenario presents a clinical environment that is challenging for nursing students who are on placement and are not familiar with a health care facility. There are also issues of senior nurses disrespecting nursing students especially when they make a mistake. Instead of coming up with a good way to approach them through positive interaction they take them as a burden to them. Good communication in skills will remain a fundamental requirement to foster a relationship for both nurses and patients. The risks involved in clinical practices calls persistence and nurses needs to device good communication tactics that would ensure quality patient healthcare. Additionally, creating a good relationship with the patient is important in making nursing work easy. It is also very important for nurses to work as a team to ensure that handing over has been correctly done to avoid putting patients on avoidable risks. 

List of References

Ammouri, A. A., Tailakh, A. K., Muliira, J. K., Geethakrishnan, R., & Al Kindi, S. N. (2015). Patient safety culture among nurses. International Nursing Review, 62(1), 102-110.

Evans, J. M., Eades, C. E., & Cameron, D. M. (2019). Health and health behaviours among a cohort of first year nursing students in Scotland: A self-report survey. Nurse education in practice.

Falk, A. L., Hopwood, N., & Dahlgren, M. A. (2017). Unfolding practices: A sociomaterial view of interprofessional collaboration in health care. Professions and Professionalism, 7(2), e1699-e1699.

Masters, K. (2018). Role development in professional nursing practice.Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Papadopoulos, I., Shea, S., Taylor, G., Pezzella, A., & Foley, L. (2016).Developing tools to promote culturally competent compassion, courage, and intercultural communication in healthcare. Journal of Compassionate Health Care, 3(1), 2.

Riley, J. B. (2015). Communication in nursing.Elsevier Health Sciences.

Shafakhah, M., Zarshenas, L., Sharif, F., & Sarvestani, R. S. (2015). Evaluation of nursing students’ communication abilities in clinical courses in hospitals. Global journal of health science, 7(4), 323.

Slade, D., Murray, K. A., Pun, J. K., &Eggins, S. (2019). Nurses’ perceptions of mandatory bedside clinical handovers: An Australian hospital study. Journal of nursing management, 27(1), 161-171.

Sonntag, O., Plebani, M., Della, P., Jones, D., Steward-Wynne, E., Walsh, J., …& Lee, M. (2016). Effective communication in clinical handover: from research to practice(Vol. 15). Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG.

Tobiano, G., Whitty, J. A., Bucknall, T., & Chaboyer, W. (2017). Nurses’ perceived barriers to bedside handover and their implication for clinical practice. Worldviews on Evidence?Based Nursing, 14(5), 343-349.