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Communication is a key skill of modern nursing practice, yet often it is an area in which nurses fail. Self-awareness exercises can help us to improve our communication skills and enhance healthcare delivery.
Communication
Personal management
These key words are based on the subject headings from the British Nursing Index.
This article has been subject to double-blind review.
There is a wealth of literature concerning communication which has become a key area in contemporary nurse education. While nursing is fundamentally about communicating care (Crawford et al 1998) and communication is at the heart of the nurse-client relationship, many problems still remain in the clinical area due to a lack of effective communication.
This gives rise to client distress, nurse frustration and inevitably, complaints (Morrison and Burnard 1991). Indeed, information supplied by Sheffield Community Health Council (personal communication) confirms that the majority of formal complaints about nursing staff concern some form or other of communication problems, such as:
Lack of effective communication.
Staff attitudes.
Bad news given inappropriately.
The UKCC Code of Professional Conduct (UKCC 1992) makes it explicit that the nurse is to '...act at all times in such a manner as to safeguard and promote the interests of individual patients and clients'. Yet how can this ideal be achieved without effective communication? Furthermore, the nurse in today's NHS is under more pressure than ever before, with a seemingly endless demand for resources, low morale and acute staffing shortages. Nurses are more likely to find themselves the subject of a complaint as patients are more aware of their rights, and of everincreasing expectations of healthcare provision and delivery.
Effective communication between the nursing practitioner and client will improve their relationship and the client's perception of the nursing care he or she has received. This in turn will have an impact on the way nurses are perceived in society as a whole.
There is a mountain of literature concerning communication and a wide range of related subjects. A literature review carried out for the purposes of this article revealed reams of relevant information included in texts dealing with communication in general, but not many relevant research studies. Many studies looked at specific aspects of nurse-client interaction such as labelling (Holyoake 1999), confidence (Kirk...