Self-Management Skills when Establishing and Maintaining Professional and Therapeutic Relationships - Essay Example

Before the conclusion, the student will reflect on his/her skills and highlight one action point for each that will benefit you in maintaining a professional and therapeutic relationship. The process of establishing a strong nurse-patient relationship could result from a constant or regular interplay or covert negotiation between the nurse and the patients until both parties can reach a mutual and satisfying relationship (Morse, 1991). Depending on the time spent between the nurses and the patients, nurses are expected to build trust and meet the individual needs of each patient.

According to Morse (1991), nurses who are not willing or failed to commit themselves to their patients would end up forming a unilateral relationship rather than a nurse-patient relationship. . Caring is the central force when developing a nurse-patient relationship that aims to protect the patient’s dignity (Kozier et al., 2004, p. 72; Astedt-Kurki et al., 2007). Therefore, developing trust between the nurse and the patient is important (Yamashita and Mound, 2005). For nurses to be able to successfully perform the seven nursing roles (i.e. the stranger role, resource role, teaching role, counseling role, surrogate role, leadership role, and technical expert role) in caring for the patients, Peplau emphasizes the need for nurses to communicate and be a good listener to the patient (Courey et al., 2008). For example, by listening to the specific needs and personal experiences of the patients, the nurses will be able to have a better understanding of how they should provide care and treatment to the patients without causing any unnecessary internal conflict between the two parties involved (Di Joseph and Cavendish, 2005).

Communication skills can affect the success or failure of a nurse-patient relationship. Therefore, nurses should be aware of their choices of words, sentence structure, and tone of voice (Kozier et al., 2004, p. 427). In most cases, patients who are emotionally happy and satisfied with the development of the nurse-patient relationship are more open in revealing their emotions to the nurses (Astedt-Kurki et al., 2007). Once the patient can share his personal experiences with the nurses, the nurses will have more opportunities to communicate with the patients and be able to provide them with the comfort they need to be able to cope with their health status.