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Understanding interpersonal skills is essential for nurses to enhance the quality of patient care. This article outlines seven best practices that can transform your approach to nursing. Be sure to read to the end for valuable understanding!
According to Nurses.co.uk’s official website, the number of registered nurses in the UK was 748,528 as of November 2023. These stats indicate the rising interest of students in pursuing nursing as a career. However, certain skills professionals must have in order to meet nursing standards; one of them is interpersonal care in nursing.
Nurses must build collaborative relationships with patients and abide by professional obligations and boundaries. In this article, we will explore some best practices for interpersonal care, personal interactions, and building a collaborative relationship between a nurse and a patient.
Without any delay, let’s review all the regulations on personal care in nursing. But before that, we will learn how the NHI defines interpersonal care in nurses.
What Is Interpersonal Caring in Nursing?
As defined by the National Health Institute(NHI), “ Interpersonal caring is the compassion-based therapeutic actions/behaviours through the collaborative partnership developed between nurse and client. It enables the client to achieve a sense of self-worth and self-esteem, which motivates them to comply with various treatment regimens for optimal well-being and normalcy.”
Interpersonal caring involves compassion, individual interaction, effective communication, and a holistic approach to ensuring the patient’s integrity and wholeness. To ensure the highest standards meet all these qualities, here are some best practices.
Top 7 Practices for Interpersonal Care in Nursing
Interpersonal care requires professionals to maintain a professional boundary while being compassionate, kind, empathetic, and concerned for the patient. However, maintaining this relationship with professional and moral responsibilities needs resilience and delegation.
To achieve professionalism in nursing, start developing interpersonal care qualities early in your education. Balancing these skills with academic and personal commitments can be challenging, so you can use assignment help services to manage your workload. This support will enable you to focus on honing the necessary skills for a successful nursing career. Investing in these qualities now will better prepare you for the demands of the profession.
1. Communicate Effectively (Verbal & Nonverbal)
Nurses should develop a sense of responsibility and professionalism while communicating with patients. They need to take care of moral, medical, and ethical responsibilities and use professional language principles.
Nursing professionals cannot be insensitive to people’s medical conditions or harsh toward them. Keeping this aside, they also cannot be too friendly or informal in their conversations while performing Interpersonal care in nursing.
Nurses need to show compassion in their verbal and non-verbal interactions with the individuals. Non-verbal communication might include passing a smile at them or touching them gently during physical interactions.
2. Show Empathy & Compassion
As we know, interpersonal caring is all about a one-to-one relationship of compassion, trust, professionalism, and confidentiality between a nurse and a patient. Nurses must show compassion, kindness, and empathy to connect with the individual emotionally and at a personal level.
Showing how much you are compassionate and concerned about the medical conditions of someone and how desperately you want them to be cured will help you win the trust of the patients and they will be able to feel connected and secure.
People with medical conditions are often scared, overwhelmed, and depressed, thinking about what happens next and whether they will be able to be cured and live a healthy life again. In such situations of Interpersonal care in nursing, patients need emotional support and are required to be treated with compassion, love, and true concern.
3. Use Therapeutic Principles to Engage
As per NMC (The Nursing and Midwifery Council) “Standards for Competence for Registered Nurses”, the professionals need to “use therapeutic principles to engage, maintain and, where appropriate, disengage from professional, caring relationships, and must always respect professional boundaries.” As per this guideline, the nurses are bound to abide by therapeutic principles when engaging with the patients. You can build a bond at a personal level, but you still need to practice professionalism.
Even if a person is engaging with you at an emotional level, you still need to remember the countries set by the officials and obligations of your profession. Nurses need to respect professional boundaries.
At some point, they might need to disengage with the person with medical issues. For example, if someone is visiting them, you need to give them privacy, you can’t sit with them for longer periods, and you can’t breach professional boundaries.
4. Respect Individual Rights to Confidentiality
According to the UK Caldicott Guardian Council, The common law duty of confidentiality states, “When someone shares personal information in confidence, it must not be disclosed without some form of legal authority or justification” Where Interpersonal care in nursing includes genuine love and concern for other individuals, it also requires a nurse to abide by the law and common ethical requirements from their side.
According to the law and ethical best practices, nurses are bound to respect a person’s right to confidentiality. They cannot disclose personal information such as address or contact details, nor the details about their medical conditions unless a legal condition compels them to. Confidentiality is the most important best practice in terms of law, ethics, and moral responsibility.
Furthermore, if nurses do not abide by the law, they might face consequences, as the details they share might damage the person mentally or physically. This obligation is also part of interpersonal care best practices, as you cannot claim to be compassionate and kind towards someone whose personal information is not safe with you.
5. Maintain Accurate Records
The best thing a nurse can do professionally for patients is maintain their accurate records. If a nurse manages correct records for individuals with diseases, they can build emotional relationships and connect at different levels. The patients will understand that this is not a random nurse; he/she is truly concerned for me and takes care of everything about me.
Suppose, God forbid, you need to visit a hospital and meet a compassionate, soft-spoken nurse who understands your situation but does not take care of your records and messes up important details about you. Will you be able to connect with that nurse emotionally and mentally? If your answer is no, you can better understand this skill’s importance. However, this is also a professional requirement for nurses to maintain accurate records.
6. Be Patient & Resilient
Being patient and resilient is a highly effective and awarded interpersonal care skill in nursing because you will face challenging and emotional situations throughout your career. You will meet all types of patients with anxiety, frustration, and pain. Patience will be your best skill for coping with these sorts of situations and helping you connect with individuals compassionately.
Remember that patients with these sorts of symptoms may behave differently under certain conditions. You need to understand their scenarios and act patiently. As a professional nurse, you will have to listen to their concerns, reply to questions, and be emotionally available to talk. However, this skill is majorly developed through the student life while performing academic responsibilities and finding nursing research topics for assignments.
In contrast, resilience will help you cope with pressure situations, depression, and setbacks. As we know, nursing is a challenging profession, and you need to be emotionally strong to manage your everyday responsibilities. Each day comes with new challenges, and nurses have to deal with emotionally demanding situations. Being resilient will assist you in developing coping mechanisms and maintaining mental health.
7. Utilise Problem-Solving & Critical Thinking
The situations nurses must go through and deal with require advanced problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. They have to handle traumatic, sad, and pressure conditions. Nurses experience all the emotional stages with the patients and their related concerned individuals.
When a patient comes, they need to analyse the seriousness of their condition and act accordingly. Sometimes, the relevant doctors might not be available due to an overload of work.
To come out of all these situations, nurses have to always perform their best in terms of thinking critically, fast, and utilising their critical thinking skills. Suppose you are a nurse already (if you are studying nursing, though), and there is some emergency; you are required to take care of the patients, assess their injuries, and perform the steps required for first aid. Along with that, you need to call the relevant doctors. All these stages need advanced problem resolution and critical evaluation of the issue while maintaining interpersonal care in nursing.
Conclusion
To conclude the discussion, we can state that nursing is a competitive field with real tests for the nerves of a professional. Nurses need to perform multiple tasks in a day and deal with critical situations. This might lead them to feel overwhelmed and drained, but that’s not an option.
Many nursing students grapple with the challenges of their rigorous studies and often contemplate quitting. However, many of them find ways to resist these difficulties. They draw on their resilience and seek support from assignment writing platforms in the UK, which can provide valuable resources and guidance during tough times.
Furthermore, Interpersonal care in nursing is also an integral part of a nursing career, which requires individuals to be soft-spoken, compassionate, and respectful towards others’ rights to confidentiality. This guide provides valuable insights into the most critical best practices a nurse needs to abide by. Following them can help you stand out as the most professional nurse.
