Professional and Therapeutic Communication Reflection

Professional and Therapeutic Communication Reflection Willian Roger Dullius Nurses have determined the communication and interaction for nursing since Florence Nightingale in the 19th century. The method to provide the communication depends on the place where it is applied having a focus to interact and satisfy the client’s needs, once that communication is the basis of health promotion and prevention (Fleischer, Berg, Zimmermann, WÃ ¼ste, Behrens, 2009). Throughout this paper, I will answer the questions one and two, which are related to the class NUSC 1P10. Reflection can be defined in numerous ways. Firstly, it can be defined as an active process, which has different aspects of interpretation. Secondly, it can be an action to reflecting or a stage of being reflected. Thirdly, it can be defined as thoughts about something where require careful considerations. Finally, reflection can be defined as a process of observation in a specific action. All of these definitions reflect to a cognition’s method in a specific circumstance related to the person (OBrien, 2014). As a purpose of reflection in the context of teaching and learning, the reflection’s process provides a positive outlook on the material, which has been studied and analyzed. The moment of reflection also provides an opportunity for the student to look at what they have done in class. Thinking about what, why, when, where, how to do something such as assignment is a way to develop the critical thinking, which is an essential for the academic student. As a result, the reflection is responsible to develop the self-observation and self-evaluation in order to improve the academic skills as well as personal skills. Gardner (1986) also argues that the reflection is a fundamental part of the learning process for everyone, which is daily developed. The reflection provided an important contribution to my learning in the class. When we did reflections through this course in lectures or in class lab, I could think about my mistakes and after to analyzing why I did them, I corrected them. For example, when I was doing my weekly lab reflection reviewing my working, I could improve my paper. Fixing them, it contributed to change the way how I respond those activities considering my expectations. In another example, during the lab activity, I had numerous challenges. One of them is that I was looking for the patient considering his disease process. However, I should be looking for whole client’s history instead of just the disease process. After reflection about my practice, I could reflect more broadly in respect of the client’s history (looking more for social determinants than process of disease). I also made mistakes related to questions and language barriers, so reviewing these challenges aspects I could understand what was necessary to change and how to perform and provide my communication skills (see Appendix A). Still, reflecting on my lab activities, I could see a language difference between the first to last day (see Appendix B). It is explicit that I had an improvement because of in the beginning the semester, some activities which required interaction in group (talking and listening), were developed with low successful expectance; however, working to improve and reviewing words to pronounce and adding in the correct method did a change in a variety of aspects in my perspective of class’s interaction. Nevertheless, considering my background in communication skill, I have begun to look at a broad perspective of interaction among client and health professionals as well as with general people. In this course, a friend had a problem. Analyzing, doing a summary and paraphrasing, using the reflection’s process, I could help him. Instead of I give my opinion or solution to his problem, I motivated him to reflect his own history under the problem. Thus, he could find by himself how to cope that problem. After that, I gave him some feedback (evaluation) about that situation. In fact, looking my methodology and evaluating this process, I could understand and see in practice how the reflection’s process is helpful and it is a way that improves the communication skill. In relation to the question two, my communication skills have changed over this term because during this term I could review my thoughts and understand that communication is essential my daily activities with emphasis in my professional career. According to Burke, Boal, Mitchell (2005), the communication is present not only in terms of professional and patient, but it is an essential on health team. It needs to be present among health professionals providing better care for their clients. For example, when we are discussing health promotion and prevention, the communication is, basically, the basis to develop activities. Hence, the communication is a skill that needs to be built considering their environment. In this process, I could note improvements in my communication skill such as in the client’s response where I, as a nurse, need to provide concise responses related to the conversation, so it will initiate affective responses to me, as a nurse, and for the client, who needs to be cared (see Appendix C). In addition, people need to consider the cultural aspects of each other during the communication, which means, it is necessary to relativize and not to generalize in the communication process. In this course, I could experience in our lab and lectures activities how students perceive health considering the client’s background, which enabled us to better assess those clients. Nonverbal communication is another skill that I have improved throughout this course. In the past, I did not give importance to client’s gestures during my assessment. However, in this course I could see how it is important. Sometimes, the body of the client does agree with his speaking and as a nurse I might get this minor detail and try to understand the real situation that the patient is involved. Another skill that I learned refer to SOLER. Using the SOLER’s technique, I could improve my communication with the patient because it provides more confidence; however, I know that it requires practice. To learn about SOLER was an amazing because in my country, Brazil, I have never learned about it. Thus, as it was new for me, I need to improve more. Although it is not taught in my course, I understand that is extremely important, so I will use in my clinical practice and to share this information with my professors in Brazil. Likewise, my listen skill has also improved during our course. Now, I incentive the client talks as much as possible. I stay in silence to just hear him/her speech. As a result, I can better analyze and evaluate those aspects and conditions related to the client, providing a better assessment. Thus, I can identify how I have changed my listening in order to better assess the client during the interview. In the past, I listened with superficial; however, now I have developed a deep and adequate time throughout my nursing assessments. Another skill that I have improved is the paraphrasing, which was not accurate in my academic skill because it is not common in my native language. In fact, I am aware that it is hard for me to paraphrase well, so I have introduced in my daily communication to practice and improve it as much as possible. In brief, throughout this course, I could notice improvements in my communication skills, which were done through the reflection’s process after those activities developed during the course. Thus, combining theory and practical aspects must provide better understand and improvement in the student’s skills. Communication is an essential skill in the human beings, and it is raised with daily activities and reflections. References Burke, M., Boal, J., Mitchell, R. (2005). Communication for better care: improving nurse-physician communication. Education For Primary Care, 16(2), 217. Fleischer, S., Berg, A., Zimmermann, M., WÃ ¼ste, K., Behrens, J. (2009). Nurse-patient interaction and communication: A systematic literature review. Journal Of Public Health (09431853), 17(5), 339. doi:10.1007/s10389-008-0238-1 Gardner, R. (1986).The psychotherapeutic techniques of Richard A. Gardner. Cresskill, N.J.: Creative Therapeutics. OBrien, R. (2014). Expressions of hope in paediatric intensive care: a reflection on their meaning. Nursing In Critical Care, 19(6), 316-321. doi:10.1111/nicc.12069 Appendix A Appendix B Appendix C