Improving Communication Skills
A nurse is a leader. It is, therefore, important for nurses to develop good leadership skills, which include communication. Communication is a mainstay quality in nursing. Proper communication has been shown to improve nursing outcomes (Kesten, 2011). Having considered this, I thought it important to develop proper communication skills that will help me in communicating with patients and fellow health workers.
Proper communication with patients is important for the development of a therapeutic relationship. A good therapeutic relationship is an integral part of holistic patient care which nurses are mandated to provide. In fact, just a feeling that one is wanted and appreciated in a place can help them to get well faster; as it has been said before, health starts in the mind. Good communication skills can also assist me in communicating with other health workers to ensure more collaboration and for the good of the patients. Of the communication skills that I needed to improve were speaking to large groups and how to specifically pass a nasty message like one of the demise of a loved one to a relative. Communicating to large groups was key for me as a student because sometimes we are required to present something before the entire class or members of the faculty and we are also required to speak to groups of patients as part of health education. This paper is a review of the whole process of planning, implementing, evaluation, and action in my attempt to improve my communication skills.
Plan (A)
Recent studies have shown that a good number of patients are dissatisfied by the communication by nurses. One research even suggested that in their communication, patients find most nurses being too formal; the nurses do not smile or crack any jokes. Despite it looking like such a trivial issue, it can really affect the patient’s perceptions about the individual nurse, the health facility or the entire nursing profession. I did not want to be a nurse whom patients develop an attitude against. For this, I had to get a perfect plan, which will help me improve my communication and communication skills within three weeks.
I dedicated the first two days of my three-week plan to study. I was to study about the components of effective communication and the tips that I need in order to be a good communicator as a nurse. Among the tips that I learnt would help me and I needed to work on them for the rest of the three-week period were maintaining eye contact with the crowd or individual making my audience; speaking in a slow but audible tone; developing a sense of humor; proper use of language; listening skills; proper use of language.
Improving my eye contact with the audience and ability to speak in low but audible tones was easy. All I had to do was practice. This entailed preparing something to talk about every single day; I would then rehearse on the chosen item and present it to a group of friends. I would allow the friends to critique my presentation and to point out the areas that needed improvement. Use of such virtual situations has been tried and found to be effective in the past; it is even proposed as a method of teaching communication skills in institutions (Foronda et al, 2014). I also researched about how to develop a sense of humor. I had learned that developing a sense of humor, which would allow me to smile or laugh at lame jokes by patients, could effectively bring me closer to the patients. I also decided to be practicing this in my conversations with friends. I had to know how to identify a joke, how to find fun in a joke, and how to tell whenever a joke crosses the line. I also planned to do the same with my listening skills since it is key for a nurse to be a good listener (McCabe and Timmins, 2013). Of the strategies to improve my listening skills, I planned to practice to listen more and speak less and to let a person finish speaking before I can interrupt.
In my plan, I was to dedicate between thirty minutes to an hour every day to improving my language. In the long-term, I plan to learn an extra language which can help me to communicate with patients or their relatives who do not speak or struggle in speaking English. I plan to learn French as part of my long-term language improvement plan.
Do
I implemented my three-week plan between Monday 7th of November and Sunday 27th of November 2016. In the first two days, I studied extensively on what I needed to do to improve my communication skills in accordance with my plan. I dedicated the time between 7: 30 and 8: 30 am every day to studying to improve the language. My studies revolved around mastery of grammar and learning to read people’s moods while speaking to them. The other activities that were to be done whenever interacting with my friends were done at the opportune time. I also practiced the skills I was learning while interacting with patients during this time.
Check
After the three weeks, it was time to evaluate the progress I had made. My means of evaluation were rather subjective ones. First, I sat down with the group of friends who had been helping me with quality improvement in communication skills and asked them for their honest opinion on how I was doing. In order to ensure honesty, I prepared nine copies of a short questionnaire and gave each of the nine friends a copy. The questionnaires were to be filled anonymously. This was like a peer review. Yoo and Chae (2011) found peer reviews to be a highly effective way of improving communication skills among nursing students.
The questionnaire examined various aspects of communication that I was working on like listening skills, speaking to a group, and the sense of humor. Seven of the questionnaire showed that I had become a better listener since I started implementing the strategies while the other two did not see a change. Three of those who identified an improvement in my listening said it was a marked improvement. Six of the nine thought that I had become a better speaker when speaking to a group, one did not see a change while two were not sure if there were changes or not. Eight of the nine thought that my sense of humor had improved while one thought that I sometimes exaggerated this humor.
In the questionnaire, there was an open question asking the respondent to say whatever area of communication they think I should improve on. Here were the nine responses:
Table 1: Responses
| SERIAL NO. | RESPONSE |
| 001 | Maintaining eye contact with the audience while speaking |
| 002 | Maintaining audibility from the beginning of a presentation to the end |
| 003 | Having a look of joyfulness or empathy while talking to one person |
| 004 | Maintaining eye contact while speaking before a large audience |
| 005 | Fluency in language |
| 006 | Use of proper language for the proper public; avoidance of medical jargon while speaking to patients |
| 007 | Audibility |
| 008 | Confidence |
| 009 | Questioning techniques |
Action
Based on the results of my evaluation, I realized that even though I had improved my ability to talk before a group, I needed to keep more eye contact. On this, I had to just to practice. Moreover, I realized that in my attempt to speak slowly and articulate all words properly, my audibility was interfered with. As part of the action, I was to work on this. Additionally, I am still working on improving my confidence while facing people and avoidance of medical jargon wherever it is not needed. I also needed to improve on my questioning techniques. As McCabe and Timmins (2013) put it, questioning is an important communication skill for nurses who might need to take patient history on find out key information from other health workers.
Conclusion
My plan and strategies were effective. According to the results of the evaluation, my communication with patients and other staff had improved greatly. In addition, I had noted that I conversed with patients more and they seemed to be happier after the interaction. However, this improvement was not complete; the gaps that needed to be filled were clearly identified in the evaluation thereafter. Am still working on the identified gaps to try and become nearly perfect. One way in which to improve my evaluation for utmost results will be to ask for immediate feedback from my virtual audience rather than wait for feedback at the end of the exercise. My method of evaluation also failed on the part of empathy. While interacting with patients, empathizing with them enhances the effectiveness of communication. However, my method of evaluation did not reveal if I had improved my ability to empathize with my audience. This is probably because my virtual audience were friends that I was used to. Interaction with real patients will help me in improving on the part of empathy.
References
Foronda, C., Gattamorta, K., Snowden, K., & Bauman, E. B. (2014). Use of virtual clinical simulation to improve communication skills of baccalaureate nursing students: a pilot study. Nurse Education Today, 34(6), e53-e57.
Kesten, K. S. (2011). Role-play using SBAR technique to improve observed communication skills in senior nursing students. Journal of Nursing Education, 50(2), 79-87.
McCabe, C., & Timmins, F. (2013). Communication skills for nursing practice. Palgrave Macmillan.
Yoo, M. S., & Chae, S. M. (2011). Effects of peer review on communication skills and learning motivation among nursing students. Journal of Nursing Education, 50(4), 230-233.
