Therapeutic Nursing For Healthcare Service: Benefits, Features, And Effective Implementation Of Therapeutic Skills In Nursing Care

Characteristics and Implementation of Therapeutic Care

Discuss about the Therapeutic Nursing for Healthcare Service.

The relationship between a nurse and a patient should be therapeutic. Therapeutic relationship refers to a helping alliance between the healthcare provider and the patient. Whenever a patient seeks for medical services, the patient should be adequately attended to by the practitioner. For a practitioner to succeed in serving the patient, they should be ready to establish a good working relationship with the patient. Healthcare service delivery is quite complex and does not only involve medical attention, but also encompasses the manner in which the whole process is handled. Communication is a very powerful tool that should be effectively applied by the healthcare provider. Therapeutic care is essential in nursing because of the contributions it makes in the delivery of holistic care to the patients. However, for a nurse to deliver a therapeutic care, the nurse should possess fundamental therapeutic communication skills. The purpose of the paper is to analyze the benefits, features, and effective implementation of therapeutic skills in nursing care.  

Therapeutic skills are fundamental in nursing care. It can make great contributions in nursing. First, it can help in creating a good rapport between the practitioner and the patient. A healthy relationship between the two is good in health care. Besides, it can help in improving the quality of healthcare services. Therapeutic approach can help in winning the confidence of the patient and creating a good reputation of the healthcare provider and organization at large (Momani & Berry, 2017). Last, but not least, therapeutic nursing can play a significant role in improving the quality of services. It can give room to the healthcare provider to deliver a holistic care to satisfy the patient’s physical, psychological, and spiritual needs (Anderson, et al., 2016). Therapeutic care is characterized by trust, empathy, acceptance, positive regard, and self-acceptance. These are techniques that should be possessed and perfectly applied by a therapist as outline herein.

Trust is one of the most outstanding characteristics of therapeutic care. Trust simply refers to the process of winning the confidence of an individual. Healthcare delivery involves two parties: the patient and practitioner. For the services provided to be effective in resolving the health issues, there must be a mutual trust between the two parties. Since the patient has trusted the healthcare provider with his life, it should be the responsibility of the practitioner to ensure that the confidence of the patient is won. The patient should be made to have a feeling that the needs are addressed by as expected (Knapp, Vangelisti & Caughlin, 2014).  

Trust

The nurse should win the confidence of the patient by taking a number of measures. To begin with, the nurse needs to be friendly because it can appeal to the client and make him be happy with the service. At the same time, the nurse should not fail to show that she has excellent skills in caring, understanding, and listening. These skills can also make the patient to be contented with the nurse because of the satisfaction that the nurse is committed to fulfilling the patient’s needs (Braithwaite & Schrodt, 2014). The other skill that should be applied when winning the trust of the patient is honesty, approachability, and politeness. Lastly, the nurse should use her listening and persuasion skills to appeal to the patient. The nurse should effectively apply these skills because their proper implementation can guarantee the success of therapeutic care.

Acceptance is another attribute that should be applied when delivering therapeutic care to the patient. The nurse should always agree to serve all sorts of clients irrespective of their difference. Healthcare services can only be successful if provided in a conducive environment for the patient and practitioner. Before delivering therapeutic care to the patients, the nurse should be ready to deal with different kinds of patients each of whom having unique needs to be addressed. Some patients are so unpredictable and difficult to handle (Dawson, Bernstein, Wilkins & Bekki, 2015). However, the nurse should not tire from serving any kind of the patient because they all have essential health needs to be met. All the patients should be unconditionally accepted because none of them can be contented with the services if they feel unaccepted.

The principle of acceptance can be implemented by encouraging the nurse to be diverse and tolerant. The nurse should be a flexible professional who is ready to handle all sorts of clients from different cultural, racial, and geographical, gender, age, behavioral, cognitive, and ethnic diversities. Each of these patients not only has specific needs, but unique beliefs, values, and views that should be understood, respected, tolerated, and acceptance no matter how strange some might be. Therefore, when confronted with such a situation, the nurse should not be overwhelmed whatsoever. Instead, the nurse should accept and serve each of the patients the way they are (Bylund, Peterson & Cameron, 2012). The nurse should adopt a therapeutic approach that shows recognition, approval, respect, and acceptance of the diversities. At no time should the nurse use defamatory words. Instead, only positive words such as ‘welcome,’ ‘thank you,’ ‘I understand,’ ‘I appreciate’ should be used when attending to the patients no matter what kind of feelings the nurse has towards them.

Acceptance

Therapeutic care is characterized by empathy. Empathy refers to the ability of a nurse to understand and the feelings and meaning of the patient and effectively communicate it to the patient. Empathy is very much different from sympathy because it entails a deeper felling of one’s needs, but not necessarily undergoing similar experiences. Meaning, nurse who is empathetic towards the patient should be ready to put herself in the shoes of the patient. Empathy can be a beneficial strategy if applied in nursing care (Gutgsell, et al., 2013). It can enable the nurse to be properly acquainted with the needs of the patient before taking the necessary measures to address them.

Empathy can be implemented by taking time to understand all the needs and feelings of the client. Each and every client has unique needs that they need to be satisfied. Therefore, it should be the responsibility of the nurse to wear the patient’s shoes so as to have a proper knowledge of what the patient is going through. After understanding the needs and feelings of the client, the nurse should go ahead to take up the measures the can positively influence the patient. Here, the nurse should use her skills to empower the patient to feel much better regardless of the challenges faced (Craig, 2013). The positive influence of the nurse is essential during nursing care because it can make the patient to have a feeling that their needs are understood and something is done about them. An effective application of empathy can therefore be relied upon to ensure that the patient is properly supported to improve the condition.

Self-awareness is an attribute that cannot be left out when outlining the features of therapeutic care. It simply refers to ability to be self-conscious-having an understanding of oneself. Self-awareness is one of the core skills of a nurse. Al nurses should have a sound knowledge of their own capabilities, strengths, background, interests, and perceptions. It can help in providing a therapeutic care to the patient because the skill can enable the healthcare provider to be an informed expert who does not let her personality differences to hinder the delivery of services to the patients (Thompson, Fahs & Kell, 2016). Many nurses have failed to provide holistic therapeutic care to the patients because they lack self knowledge which is of course essential in understanding the patients and the healthcare set up in general.

Empathy

The concept of self-awareness can be implemented by making deliberate efforts to understand one’s attributes and personality differences. A nurse who is committed to delivering a therapeutic care should carry out an objective self-reflection so as to have a sound knowledge of herself. During this process, the nurse should critique her own values, beliefs, opinion, limitations, strengths, prejudices, motivations, feelings, and attitudes (Arnold & Boggs, 2015). Once al these are properly understood, the nurse can be put in a better position to understand the patients. The skills identified should be used to establish a good relationship with the patient. It is commendable to begin the process from self-reflection because if the nurse understands herself better, she cannot find many difficulties in understanding and addressing the needs of each and every client. Clients need to be addressed differently because they have diverse needs that cannot be adequately met by relying on only one approach.

Conclusion

Nursing is a tasking profession because it requires the practitioners to have a moral obligation of attending to the clients and meeting their needs. However, this is always challenging because each client has diverse needs. One way of addressing this difficulty is by providing a therapeutic care. Here, the healthcare provider should be ready to establish a cordial and healthy relationship with the patient. To do so, the nurse should deeply understand and perfectly apply the principles of trust, empathy, acceptance, positive regard, and self-acceptance. Therapeutic care can be beneficial because it enhances the quality of services delivered to the patients.

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