Interpersonal Skills for Nursing Practice Essay

Interpersonal Skills for Nursing Practice - Essay Example Establishing this kind of effective communication in order to be understood and also get necessary feedback to help the nurse in his or her work is very essential and demanding. It requires a keen evaluation of the environment to understand the kind of people such a nurse is dealing with and find the most suitable ways of communicating with that person or groups of people. It is even more challenging when interpersonal skills are put to task together with the skills of communication so as to help solve a given situation or simply just pass information to a patient who does not seem to have it easy in receiving and giving needed feedback. Like for my case, James has cerebral palsy and thus coordination and communication becomes very difficult for him (Beckung, 2002, pp. 309-316). For James, saying a few words is possible but these are very limited to the format of yes or no kind of approach and this could at time me combined with hand gestures which need to be learnt well in order to know how to respond to his needs. The difficulties that come with interpersonal communication aside, communication remains a very critical part of any healthcare provision practice and no nursing professional is safe without this important skill. It is a fundamental concept within the care giving practice. There are variations when it comes to safe and effective communication and the situation becomes even more complicated when it is the case to do with patients from special groups such as disabled, infants, old people and others where a variety of skills are required to carry out a successful nursing practice on these groups. the practice thus involved application of complex skills and other forms of intervention which in most cases become characterized by care, compassion, respect and dignity (Creel, et al., 2002, pp.2-28). This paper deals with the application of interpersonal nursing skills which puts much emphasis on effective communication with patients and other people through the application of interpersonal skills that have been learnt in my course of study. To help me make a clear approach to explaining how I went through this process successfully, I will have to deal with various aspects of communication and would address such things as the relationship and factors which do influence engagement or relationship between the nursing professional and the patient or other people. This area will have to narrow down to various factors such as those resulting from the environment; the active listening skills which includes non-verbal communication while attending to a patient; qualities for building up good relationships; and the development of ethically sound relationships with patients and people around me. In this paper, I would try linking theory and practice by relating what I have learnt in class to my practical nursing experience with the patient, James. I am expected to give a clear and vivid explanation of what went on and how I happened to tackle it (Nursing & Midwifery Council, 2004). The patient that I dealt with in my practice and application of these skills was James as mentioned above. This patient had a spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy and suffers from epilepsy and scoliosis. His normal functioning of the body muscles is disrupted causing st iffness of the body muscles or paralysis of the four quadrants of the body at ago. For that case, James could not walk and had impaired speech functions (Banta, 2003, pp.2-18;