Apply Effective Communication Skills

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Good communication skills are a vital aspect of nursing. Communication is a process that requires interpretation, sensitivity, imagination and active participation. Nurses interact with many persons in the course of their profession and good communication assists in meeting legal, ethical and clinical standards of care. If communication fails, there may be serious difficulty, increased liability and a threat to professional credibility. There are many steps to take in order to improve communication skills in nursing such as honesty, availability and responsiveness.
The first step towards effective communication in nursing is honesty. As nurses, we may often find ourselves making promises that we can’t keep. This could be anything along the lines of, “I’ll be back in 2 minutes” or “The doctor will be with you shortly.” Although we may have good intentions, and we may often forget the promises we make, our patients are relying on us to be honest and follow through with these promises. It is important not to make promises we cannot keep.
The next step is availability. Nurses are constantly busy with filling out paper work and caring for patients so it may seem that sometimes we are unavailable. Patients and their family members may feel like they are being ignored. Sometimes these feelings are unreasonable but they can be justifiable. If this is the case, we must take a look at the communication process and take corrective action.
The last step is responsiveness. This goes hand in hand with availability. From a patient and their family’s perspective, nurses do not have good responsive skills. Although we may be busy, we need to remember that we have other patients to care for and must attend to them quickly to ensure that they are happy and safe.
The most important thing is that we must be empathetic to those in our care and communicate professionally as nurses. As

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