Therapeutic Communication in Psychiatric Nursing: Summary (Nursing)

00:01 So, let's summarize a little bit.

00:04 There was an awful lot that just was imparted to you, that I've tried to communicate with you.

00:12 I've been trying to give you this message and I'm hoping that this sender, is reaching you, the receiver, and that you are understanding the words that I'm saying.

00:25 I'm hoping that, especially, when I was just talking about changing topics, that you, as a professional nurse, are going to be able to be aware of your own biases, and understand, when you start to judge your patient rather than to be able to listen to that patient.

00:47 Because any bias that you're holding, any judgment you begin to feel, is going to start to interfere with communicating with that patient.

00:59 Also, your verbal and non-verbal communication, they hold equal importance while you are trying to develop this therapeutic communication.

01:10 Your patient has probably spoken to multiple nurses, many therapists, and a number of doctors. They are experts in their own disease.

01:23 They are experts in watching and seeing if a person is listening or not listening.

01:31 You want to be able to keep their cultural identities, as well as your own in consideration.

01:39 And understand that therapeutic communication is intentional.

01:45 It is active. It uses strategies and skills, unlike any skill and any strategy, it must be practice in order to be something that you can do very easily and doesn't seem forced.

02:01 There will be times when those non-therapeutic approaches might start to rise up.

02:08 You want to avoid them. You want to be self-aware, so that if that non-therapeutic strategy starts coming up, you recognize the fact that this is not a social situation.

02:20 You are here to give reassurance not advice.

02:25 In social situations, many of those different strategies might be appropriate.

02:32 But in a professional therapeutic communication, you want to only keep yourself to the therapeutic ways of talking to someone.

02:45 Like I said, and I've said many times, your well-being is also important.

02:52 If you're not sleeping well, if you're not eating well, if you're not hydrating, if you're not making sure that you have something to take care of yourself, your ability to be therapeutic for somebody else is going to be very small, and so in order to keep yourself in a position where you are professional and can engage in that therapeutic communication, take care of yourself.

03:18 You're worth it.