Towards Better Nurse-Patient Interaction Essay

Introduction

When analyzing the value of the nurse-patient interaction for both parties, I can note that not only those in need of care benefit from communication with junior medical personnel but also nurses themselves. An opportunity to assess human problems and barriers as closely as possible allows for obtaining important experiences associated both with clinical conditions and life situations. As an example, I intend to share my experience of communicating with a patient suffering from depression. Regular meetings with him became for me a significant factor in my moral uplift and charged me emotionally, thereby proving that psychological depression is not transmitted through personal interaction.

Role of Empathy

The patient whose case I am describing suffered from prolonged depression brought on by the loss of a loved one. An older man was admitted for treatment with signs of a heart attack after the death of his wife, but subsequently, he developed a psychological disorder amid a personal tragedy. He refused to eat, ignored medical treatment, and showed indifference to the care of the medical staff. However, my experience with him allowed me to feel uplifted, largely because I was able to support the patient through empathy and compassion. According to Wu (2021), nursing empathy is a valuable stimulus to improve patients’ mental states and a driver to achieving their emotional self-disclosure. Faced with the challenge of the man’s depression, I showed restraint and, at the same time, attention to his grief, which allowed me to get closer to him and provide the necessary psychological and medical support. This success charged me with positive emotions and demonstrated to me what nursing empathy was worth.

Compassion as a Step to Success

Despite the potentially controversial possibility of emotional uplift due to interacting with the depressed patient, I can note that my morale improved significantly. Among the reasons, I can mention not only achieving real positive changes in care but also compassion, which allowed me to get closer to the patient. I am aware that nurses’ deep immersion in patients’ problems is fraught with psychological difficulties associated with the accumulation of negative experiences. Moreover, as Pérez-García et al. (2021) argue, the phenomenon of compassion fatigue often becomes an obstacle to effective nursing practice and can lead to a lack of job motivation. Nevertheless, when evaluating the described case, I can confidently say that my interaction with the target patient brought me much more benefit than harm, including from the standpoint of emotional uplift. By creating an appropriate care environment for the man and focusing on his problems, I felt how important my functions were. Therefore, after noticing the improvement in the patient’s morale, I experienced a strong moral uplift and realized that I had chosen the right occupation to realize my short-term and long-term missions to the fullest.

Conclusion

The experience of interacting with the depressed patient charged me emotionally and allowed me to prove that helping people with such mental disorders should not be regarded as a risk of passing a depressed state to the nurse. Effective communication, achieved through empathy and compassion as the crucial aspects of care, became a significant contribution to reducing the man’s moral heaviness caused by the death of his loved one. Creating a favorable care environment allowed for productive nurse-patient communication, which had a positive effect on both parties involved.

References

Pérez‐García, E., Ortega‐Galán, Á. M., Ibáñez‐Masero, O., Ramos‐Pichardo, J. D., Fernández‐Leyva, A., & Ruiz‐Fernández, M. D. (2021). Qualitative study on the causes and consequences of compassion fatigue from the perspective of nurses. International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, 30(2), 469-478. Web.

Wu, Y. (2021). Empathy in nurse-patient interaction: A conversation analysis. BMC Nursing, 20(1), 1-6. Web.