NUR120 Introduction To Professional Nursing

Assignment description:  

Reflect and discuss the importance of developing and maintaining professional therapeutic relationships in healthcare.

1. Discuss the importance of being able to ‘bounce back’ from difficult circumstances
2. The stigma and bias you may encounter as a nurse,
3. Describe and discuss the interplay of personal and professional values to enable the experience of engaging in therapeutic relationships with consumers,family, peers and community,

4. Identify and use strategies to maintain the integrity of self and personal pliancy through intra and interaction with people in healthcare practice

As a nursing professional, it is crucial to have a clear ideation regarding the importance or impact of the therapeutic relationship in the professional clinical practice. Although, many seem to overlook the fact that therapeutic relationship is not just effective when engaging with a patient of their friends and family, therapeutic relationship is also extremely beneficial in ensuring mutual respect and easy camaraderie between care providers (Kangasniemi, Pakkanen & Korhonen, 2015). In this essay, I would attempt to reflect upon the importance of developing and maintaining professional therapeutic relationships in healthcare.

First and foremost, the nursing is a professional which is associated with providing care and support to the sick and ailing, and in the course of that, the nurses encounter a variety of challenging situations. Such situations can range from challenging behaviour or lack of response from the patient, ill treatment of misbehaviour from the family members of the patients, ethical dilemmas during care decision making, and lastly the inevitable death of a patient. Such challenging or difficult circumstances has a range of perilous impact on the nurses and their competence (Chadwick & Gallagher, 2016). However, the psychological health of nurses has tremendous importance; and I personally believe, as nurses, if we have to deliver optimally safe and effective care at all times, the state of our physical and mental health status must be optimal as well. The resilience is one attribute that can help the nurses overcome the challenges and bounce back from any difficult situation, which can be established successfully using professional therapeutic relationship in the workplace.

As nurses, stigma and bias is also a very important obstacle that can easily interfere with the competence or performance of the nurses. For instance, especially for nurses belonging to culturally diverse backgrounds, the impact of the stigma faced even inside the professional environment of the facility, by the co-workers even. Along with that, the profession itself is subjected many orthodox and conventional population or demographic settings. In this case, communication is the key to overcoming the stigmatization or bias. In most cases, the lack of awareness and understanding is the main perpetrator of the stigmatizing attitudes towards the nurses, especially in the socially backward and remote settings. For such populations, the enhancing the awareness of the public and increasing their exposure to health care and its multiverse benefits can alter the stigmatizing attitude towards nurses. Similarly, discrimination or bias faced by the nursing professionals themselves due to cultural, religious or ethnic differences can also be bridged effectively by communication (Riley, 2015). Hence, communication is key to overcoming such challenges or issues faced by nurses every day in practice, and this effective culturally safe communication practice is impossible to be attained without successful therapeutic relationship.

Similarly, the personal and professional values of the nurses also has a great impact on the ability or capability of the nurses to engage in in therapeutic relationships with consumers, family, peers and community. In my personal beliefs, the impact of compassion, empathy and justice, a few core personal values are ingrained in an individual through the whole process of growing up. These values are very difficult to be incorporated as an external process, and similarly, the impact of these ingrained values help nurses to recognize the need for compassion and empathy in their care procedures, even in the process of development of therapeutic relationship. Similarly, the impact of lack of these values can lead to disrupting the process of developing the therapeutic relations with patients, their family, and co-workers as well (Giger, 2016).

Hence, maintaining integrity and personal pliancy, which relates significantly with resilience, is a fundamental requirement for the nurses. As per the standard 3 of registered nurses practice by NMBA, using a lifelong learning process and active engagement with the profession is crucial for maintaining practice capability. Hence, the nurses need to open themselves up to the need for continual professional development and learning to improve their practice every day to be able to excel in this profession (Nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au, 2019). Similarly, in order to preserve the self-integrity and at the same time enhance pliancy, the need to broaden the acceptability to change and understanding the need for identifying personal weaknesses every step of the way is very crucial. I believe as nurses we are bound to provide our best efforts to providing care and support to patients at all times and for that being open to lifelong learning is important. Engaging with the profession, scope of practice and the fundamental responsibility of nursing is also a critical need for us nurses to realize (Arnold & Boggs, 2015). Although, interacting with peers has a tremendous impact on self-realization and finding stability, especially in nursing practice. In my personal opinion, I have encountered feeling very lost and confused, unable to continue many times, and a sound open conversation to my peers has helped me bounce back from such instances. Hence, the interaction with the co-health-workers can help in restoring integrity of self and personal pliancy significantly as well.

On a concluding note, I would like to state that nursing is one of the most challenging public service professional domain, and challenging situations will never cease to exist in our profession. Although, nursing is also one of the most honourable professions, which in turn, is an indispensable part of the health care industry. This reflective essay discussed how therapeutic interaction, among care providers, patients and in between care professionals can help us care providers grow and excel in this noble profession.

References:

Arnold, E. C., & Boggs, K. U. (2015). Interpersonal relationships: Professional communication skills for nurses. Elsevier Health Sciences. Retrieved from https://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=7DAxBgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=communication+in+nursing+&ots=uYwwMXzCTq&sig=itTfK43u5jT4I314CtztUNvaQgU#v=onepage&q=communication%20in%20nursing&f=false

Chadwick, R., & Gallagher, A. (2016). Ethics and nursing practice. Macmillan International Higher Education. Retrieved from https://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=vG6CDAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=values+and+principles+in+nursing+&ots=_Je4tTIZha&sig=nHUxJJlYrUbUskZ-TglWjIGhOv0#v=onepage&q=values%20and%20principles%20in%20nursing&f=false

Giger, J. N. (2016). Transcultural nursing: Assessment and intervention. Elsevier Health Sciences. Retrieved from https://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=XCWKCwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=communication+in+nursing+&ots=Ub49FhMXwH&sig=odZhN2hfQYwEAuCs1K301aBWT7s#v=onepage&q=communication%20in%20nursing&f=false

Kangasniemi, M., Pakkanen, P., & Korhonen, A. (2015). Professional ethics in nursing: an integrative review. Journal of advanced nursing, 71(8), 1744-1757. Doi: 10.1111/jan.12619

Nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au. (2019). Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia – Registered nurse standards for practice. [online] Available at: https://www.nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au/Codes-Guidelines-Statements/Professional-standards/registered-nurse-standards-for-practice.aspx [Accessed 16 Feb. 2019].

Riley, J. B. (2015). Communication in nursing. Elsevier Health Sciences. Retrieved from https://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SwndCwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=communication+in+nursing+&ots=YZri12ynvD&sig=2n66QuiphDCaIoP6_XkkvpQxilE#v=onepage&q=communication%20in%20nursing&f=false