The Concept of Therapeutic Relationships within Palliative Care - Example

Name : xxxxxxxxxxx Institution : xxxxxxxxxxx Title : Critical reflective essay Tutor : xxxxxxxxxxx Course : xxxxxxxxxxx @2011 Introduction A reflective essay basically entails presenting an individual’s feelings and views about a certain subject or an experience. The essay gives a student the opportunity to talk about and reveal their personal insight concerning a particular topic or experience (Spinello2010).By undertaking this particular course I believe that my individual views on the content taught during the course and my experience during group activity brings out my true personal opinions. The main objective of my reflective essay is therefore to relay successfully my own observations, thinking and believes. Relevant concepts covered in the course with specific examples from my group sessions One of the relevant concepts covered in the course is the concept of therapeutic relationships within palliative care. From our group discussion, the analogy for the concept is that therapeutic relationships or also what is referred to as a helping alliance is actually one of the most fundamental domains of the practice of palliative care . All our group members were in agreement that a therapeutic relation within palliative care entails developing a relationship between professionals in health care with their clients in order advance the quality of life that patients and families faced with the challenge of life threatening diseases go through. In addition all of us were in consensus that therapeutic relationships within palliative care is a kind of patient oriented care which aims at understanding the patient more as opposed to the disease in which they were suffering (Russell 2002) . My understanding of this particular concept however is that although it may be termed as patient oriented as opposed to the health care professional oriented, in my opinion, focus should be laid on the professional. It is vital that healthcare professionals enjoy what they are doing when creating a helping alliance with the clients. For instance a palliative care nurse may be dealing with various clients however he or she does not really enjoy what they are doing. In a situation whereby there is non-enjoyment of work, the patient is definitely going to be negatively affected. Therefore, in my opinion, it essential to not just link therapeutic relationships within palliative care as client centered it should also focus on having professionals who enjoy what they are doing. Another relevant concept covered entailed the communication challenges when undertaking therapeutic relationships within palliative care. In our group discussion we outlined that good communication is more essential in the process palliative care, essentially because it results to optimizing the patient’s involvement which is vital when developing a therapeutic relationship. In our findings we outlined that communication challenges are frequently caused by lack of effective communication skills which further makes a health care professional to lack the ability to convey concern and empathy towards the client and their family. Lack effective negotiation also creates communication challenges in therapeutic relationships within palliative care. In addition lack of balance between the health care professional’s agenda and that of the patient may also result to a situation whereby a communication barrier is created. In my opinion I also thought of lack of compliance by of health care practitioners to the needs of the clients also results to development of communication barriers. We have heard of many cases where nurses openly neglect their patients, as a result the patients are not free to open up and express what they really feel, which possess a great challenge in improving the quality of life of the patients. The concept of the invaluable benefits that contribute to both the patient and the nurse was also another relevant aspect covered during the course. Our group discussion came up with findings of mechanisms that can impede or contribute to therapeutic relationships come in many forms. Some of these were noted as being cognitive, behavioral, experimental interventions, patient factors. My comments for this ideas is that, considering these particular aspects, I can state that palliative care is a domain that depends on an approach that is multidisciplinary, it basically seeks to cover areas such as human rights and ethical values which in turn act as a basis for invaluable benefits to both the health practitioner and the patient. As a result if the palliative care team effectively establishes a relationship that is valuable and beneficial to the patient, both the practitioners and the patient are bound experience behavioral and cognitive transformation. This is essentially because therapeutic relationships within palliative care entails both spiritual and psychological aspects which further impact an individual’s thinking and even behavior. The communication processes within my group In my opinion process of communication within my group was actually quite effective which basically assisted us to complete the task. Craig (2000) argues that one of the essential components of effective group dynamics is communication. Due to the fact that a group is formed with an aim of accomplishing a certain task, it is vital for the team members to have good communication skills which can be useful in proper analysis and solving of the problem in question. What I witnessed is that members of my group had effective communication skills which assisted me to understand their view points better. For instance in case an individual raised a particular point, each member would listen keenly and then give their opinions on the matter later. As we learnt in the course , good communication skills is a vital element for health care practitioners when undertaking therapeutic relationships within palliative care, I was able to witness the practicability of good communication skills during our group sessions. In addition I believe that communication is a two way process, thus every participant in the process should fully participate and bring out there viewpoints of the problem in question. In the context of our group discussion I think we effectively applied our communication skills effectively and no particular person was more dominant over the other, each individual equally participated. However a negative aspect arose when disagreement arose concerning certain points which we spent a lot of time in resolving. As we learnt in the course, health care practitioners should not dominate the communication process when developing palliative relationships with their patient’s .It is vital that they should also give the patient a chance to express their feelings and viewpoints in order to develop a mutual environment for both parties. In terms of group development, team work is a vital aspect. The group behavior of the individuals in a group should be founded on the aspect of working as a team but not as an individual (Craig 2002).This aspect was well integrated in our group because we all took up team work in order to come up with the complete task, each individual had a section to tackle and later we shared the findings in order to come up with a full report. Therapeutic relationships within palliative care also greatly involves the development of teams also known as the palliative care team, if every practitioner works in conjunction with other staff to enhance effective therapeutic relationships then it is evident that team work will produce positive outcomes for the patients. For instance the patients will develop a feeling that everyone is greatly concerned about their welfare. Tuckman (1965) made a proposal of the stages of group development which he referred to as the Tuckman stages for an ideal group discussion. The stages entailed; forming whereby the members of the group have to pretend that they get along with others very well. The other strategy involves storming that is getting down to issues that are relevant to the objectives of the discussion. Norming is another step which basically involves developing productivity and trust. The other step he proposes is working as a group in order to achieve a common goal. The aspects proposed by Tuckman concerning group development were evident in our group discussion. I could view all group members get down to business by discussing the key issues, we also got along well and coordinated in order to come up with a full report. The positive experience in my group was that it actually worked very well. However the negative aspect is that due to floods were not able to access computer or internet therefore had trouble communicating with other members of the group. However we managed to access information afterwards and we were able to compile our ideas. My thoughts and feelings in relation to the experiences, and how we would do things better next time. My thought about the experience is that group’s are effective methods of learning essentially becomes we get to share our ideas. In addition groups facilitate the development of communication skills which is an important element for health care practitioners. Groups also act as basis of building good relations which other, which also is a prerequisite of the attributes of a good health care practitioner. In order to do things better next time, we should work on time management, by not spending a lot of time arguing about one particular point. Otherwise my group experience was very productive. Conclusion The reflective essay presented above is basically a depiction of my experience of working in the group context and also my view point concerning the course content .I believe that by presenting my perspective of my experience I am able to reflect on the content and also analyze issue in the context of real life situation. References Bruce Tuckman (1965). Group dynamics. Craig, P, 2002, Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, Journal on Society of Group Psychology and Group Psychotherapy. Spinello, S, 2010, What Is a Reflective Essay Paper, eHow Contributor 2 Russell, S, 2002, Nurses and ‘difficult’ patients: negotiating non-compliance, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 43(3), 281–287. Read More