Therapeutic letters in undergraduate nursing education: Ideas for clinical nurse educators

Patricia E Freed1, Dorcas E McLaughlin, Lee SmithBattle

  • 1Saint Louis University, School of Nursing, 3525 Caroline Mall, St. Louis, MO 63104-1099, USA. pfreed@slu.edu

Nurse Education Today
|November 26, 2009
PubMed

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Communication is a lifelong learning process. Through therapeutic communication, nurses can collect relevant assessment data, provide education and counseling, and interact during nursing interventions. Sending and receiving messages occur through verbal and nonverbal communication techniques and can happen separately or simultaneously.
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The history of therapeutic communication can be traced back to Florence Nightingale, who emphasized the importance of developing trusting relationships with patients. She taught that the presence of nurses with patients results in therapeutic healing.
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Focusing involves centering a conversation on a message's critical elements or concepts. Focusing is valuable if the talk is vague or patients begin to repeat themselves. Sometimes, when patients are asked about their symptoms, they may go off-topic and try to tell their entire life story. Respectfully, the nurse should bring the conversation back into focus.
This therapeutic technique can also be used when a patient brings up pertinent information during a health-related conversation. The...
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Sharing information, concepts, and emotions to foster mutual understanding is communication. The sender, recipient, and transaction must be considered in this manner. The sender is the person who shares the message, the recipient is the person who receives and understands the message, and the transaction is the method used to deliver the message and the variables that affect the communication's context and surroundings. The nurse-client connection is built on therapeutic communication.
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Nursing organizations play a vital role in representing nurses working in specialized clinical settings, such as the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN).
The AACN emphasizes a healthy work environment through six standards to achieve an optimal patient outcome. The standards are appropriate staffing, meaningful recognition, collaboration, authentic leadership, effective communication, and decision-making. In addition, AACN provides certification programs, webinars, journals, and...