NURSE-PATIENT INTERACTION: CONSIDERATIONS FOR CARE

This paper focuses on nurse-patient interaction which can also be referred to as therapeutic nurse-patient interaction, is a trusting relationship that the nurse establishes with the patient. It exists for the purposes of promoting clients' health and wellbeing. It enables the nurse to gain insight into the condition of the patient and thereby making the right clinical judgment and assist the patient to grow and develop emotional stability. It is the patient who benefits from the relationship. For the relationship to work, three factors that come to play are the nurse, patient or client factor, and the environmental factors which overlap with each other. There are principles that need to follow to achieve an effective nurse-patient interaction, as well as bottlenecks that need to be cleared to have the real presence of the nurse in the relationship. Without the nurse-patient relationship in place, the nurse just performs the routine task such as taking vital signs and giving of medications among others and still be distancing him / herself from the patient. It is recommended that nurses and management should strive to remove the barriers that come in the way of reaping the beneficial effects of therapeutic nurse-patient interaction. The paper identified the need for empathy and reflective nursing as well as the use of role play in student nurses' training and professional orientation to come to terms with real / perceived feelings of patients.