Introduction
In healthcare, communication plays a vital since it ensures understanding between care professionals and patients, promotes health literacy, and literally saves lives. For delivering an effective treatment and achieving positive health outcomes, care providers need to be proactive in recognizing and meeting patients’ needs. Moreover, communication determines the quality of relationships between doctors, nurses, specialists, and other staff members, whose cooperation is critical in terms of holistic care. The Doctors of Nursing Practice (DNPs) take the role of leaders, who are expected to apply an interprofessional approach, advance practices, and optimize care quality (Edwards et al., 2018). In this connection, this paper examines the competences of DNPs that are essential in verbal, non-verbal, and written communication.
Verbal Communication Competencies and the Practice Scholar
In today’s healthcare environment, open communication, diversity awareness, and proactiveness compose a culture that encourages empathy. For DNP leaders, it is of great importance to break the barriers to effective communication by adopting the principles of active listening, which means trying to consider the situations of colleagues and patients from their perspectives (Edwards et al., 2018). Active listening competence also implies asking questions, rephrasing, and being sensitive to the interlocutors. As stated by Vogel et al. (2016), a warm and reassuring approach leads to the satisfaction of those who work directly with patients and also those who accomplish administrative tasks. Therefore, active listening and empathy should be included in the verbal communication training of DNP leaders.
Verbal communication in healthcare refers to words and phrases chosen by care providers to translate their messages to colleagues and patients. Since DNP leaders are expected to inspire others and act as change agents, their verbal communication should be direct and open to avoid any misunderstanding (Sibiya, 2018). By using proper intonation, structures, and appeals, DNPs can achieve greater effectiveness in expressing their ideas and requests. The attention to the context of communication is another vital skill that should be practiced. For example, if a nurse is resistant to change, the DNP should be able to explain the reasons and anticipated values of new policies, thus convincing the nurse that innovation would benefit him or her, as well as the organization as a whole. On the contrary, it is ineffective to aggressively claim the compliance with the new rules. The way a DNP leader discusses one or another topic may change, depending on the perceptions of interlocutors, expected results, leadership styles, and other factors.
Tone, pace, and emotionality of a voice compose a set of communication skills, the use of which creates more opportunities for DNP nurses to organize healthcare environments. In many cases, people perceive the tone and emotions of a message unconsciously, and a lack of sincerity or transparency may reduce the level of trust in the leader. According to Sibiya (2018), the speech of DNPs should be confident, calm, and respectful, so that colleagues and patients would feel that the leader’s actions and recommendations are correct. At the same time, the voice should not be authoritative, leaving enough room for others to take the initiative instead of blindly following the instructions. While offering treatment options, it is critical to remain neutral yet not indifferent to patient problems (Sibiya, 2018). If a nurse deserves appraisal, the leader should be honest but not artificially enthusiastic in providing it. Along with words and tone, non-verbal communication serves as another way to interact with patients and care deliverers.
Non-Verbal Communication Competencies and the Practice Scholar
Non-verbal communication largely refers to facial expressions and body language. Considering that DNP practice scholars constantly work with people, the importance of this type of communication cannot be overestimated. Facial expressions can be defined as a mirror that reflects the intrinsic thoughts of a care provider, which means that patients and other professionals can easily recognize them (Vogel et al., 2016). For example, while presenting the results of laboratory tests to a patient, facial expressions should be friendly and comforting. On the contrary, if the leader would express excessive excitement or frustration, it is an example of negative non-verbal behavior. The vocal dimension should involve proper rhythm, volume, rate, pitch, and pausing, while these instruments may vary depending on the intended impact. To emphasize some ideas, the leader can use longer pauses, and to encourage someone to speak, he or she can include habitual fillers, such as OK, um, so, et cetera (Hopkinson et al., 2019). A lack of sensitivity to other’s emotions, monotonousness, and inability to hear what exactly they try to say during the interaction indicate poor non-verbal communication skills.
The posture of DNP leaders plays a key role in how others perceive their suggestions and requests. In the scholarly study by Pattison et al. (2017), it was established that those nurse leaders who choose sitting and maintaining an eye contact with patients were more likely to build closer relationships, while those standing spent less time per patient, but the satisfaction of their patients was lower. These results can also be related to a leader-care provider encounter, in which a sitting position seems to be more preferable for leaders to achieve their goals through communication. At the same time, taking the so-called power pose or ignoring the impact of an eye contact leads to the inappropriate interpretation of the leader’s words by interlocutors (Pattison et al., 2017). For example, patients and colleagues may think that the leader does not want to spend much time with them or that the conversation is tense, meaning negative health outcomes or work-related challenges. In this regard, it is especially important for DNPs to make conscious decisions about their non-verbal communication details.
Written Communication Competencies and the Practice Scholar
Written communication is another cornerstone of effective nursing leadership as it makes a significant impact on professional practices. Among the ways to interact, there are department memos, schedules, reports, newsletters, emails, and research studies. The key goal of DNPs’ written communication is the organization of the environment and management of employees (Sibiya, 2018). More to the point, clarity and accuracy are the essential aspects of such communication since they ensure tracking patient records and proper documentation in general. Handwritten notes are a traditional form of written interaction, which is valued by middle and older age care providers, while electronic means are preferred by younger specialists (Giddens & Morton, 2018). Nevertheless, the growing digitalization of the world, including the healthcare area, prioritizes using electronic health records (EHRs), digital databases, and social media. Leaders should understand that these tools provide the opportunity for immediate reactions, proper data storage, and sharing information timely.
A professional level of DNP written communication implies clarity and the ability to maintain respect and diversity awareness to prevent any misinterpretation. The dynamics of leader-care provider and leader-patient interaction can be monitored based on written communication (Giddens & Morton, 2018). For example, conflict resolution can be successfully managed by sending brief clarification messages, inviting people to share their concerns, and preparing a final report. A lack of timeliness and professionalism, on the contrary, would create the inadequate perception of conflicts. Accordingly, written communication should be developed across the leadership career since it needs to integrate both traditional and digital means.
Written communication can be beneficial to implement an organization’s strategic plans. Uzarski and Broome (2019) emphasize that DNPs should use Standard English to write project dissemination manuscripts, poster presentations, and memos, so that employees of different cultural backgrounds can easily understand them. The written communication plan should be prepared in advance, where commitment to organizational goals, transparency, and consistency should be followed. The authors also assume that the creation of shared and edible online documents is another opportunity (Uzarski & Broome, 2019). Feedback from employees should be declared a priority to ensure two-way interaction and continuous improvement.
Conclusion
To conclude, it should be accentuated that DNP leadership should incorporate a combination of verbal, non-verbal, and written communication. This paper aimed to explore the role of the mentioned types of communication in the context of healthcare lead by DNPs. It was discovered that verbal communication involves choosing proper words, pace, and tone, while open communication and diversity awareness are to be its key characteristics. The significance of non-verbal communication is associated with the impact of body language and facial expressions. Written communication allows providing formal communication based on digital technologies, which increase the pace and accuracy of communication. Thus, a DNP leader’s effective communication competencies determine care quality, relationship building, conflict solution, and organizational progress success.
References
Edwards, N. E., Coddington, J., Erler, C., & Kirkpatrick, J. (2018). The impact of the role of Doctor of Nursing Practice nurses on healthcare and leadership. Medical Research Archives, 6(4), 1-11.
Giddens, J., & Morton, P. (2018). Pearls of wisdom for chief academic nursing leaders. Journal of Professional Nursing, 34(2), 75-81.
Hopkinson, S. G., Oblea, P., Napier, C., Lasiowski, J., & Trego, L. L. (2019). Identifying the constructs of empowering nurse leader communication through an instrument development process. Journal of Nursing Management, 27(4), 722-731.
Pattison, K. H., Heyman, A., Barlow, J., & Barrow, K. (2017). Patient perceptions of sitting versus standing for nurse leader rounding. Journal of Nursing Care Quality, 32(1), 1-5.
Sibiya, M. N. (2018). Effective communication in nursing. In N. Ulutasdemir (Ed.), Nursing (pp.19-36). Intech Open.
Uzarski, D., & Broome, M. E. (2019). A leadership framework for implementation of an organization’s strategic plan. Journal of Professional Nursing, 35(1), 12-17.
Vogel, D., Meyer, M., & Harendza, S. (2018). Verbal and non-verbal communication skills including empathy during history taking of undergraduate medical students. BMC Medical Education, 18(1), 1-7.