REFLECTION ON COMMUNICATION

Reflection on communication

Reflection on communication

In this assignment, I need to reflect on the situation that taken place during my clinical placement to develop and utilize my interpersonal skills in order to maintain the therapeutic relationships with my patient. In this reflection, I am going to use Gibbs (1988) Reflective Cycle. This model is a recognized framework for my reflection. Gibbs (1988) consists of six stages to complete one cycle which is able to improve my nursing practice continuously and learning from the experience for better practice in the future.

I was trying to communicate with a lady resident who had dementia; she cannot speak as she has lost the ability to. I needed to ask her if she was in any pain. Her facial features were calm but she was not sitting still, she was moving around on her chair fidgeting. I asked another member of staff and she told me that this behavior signified pain and that I should let the staff nurse know. According to Åstedt-Kurki, (2001, p452) the emphatic listening is about the willingness to understand the other person not just judging the person's fact. Then, I touched her shoulder, kept saying, and raise my tone a bit because I was afraid if she had a hearing trouble.

At the same time, I did somebody gesturers which could be interpreted an action of eating. I paused, repeated my actions but this time I was using some simple words in the patient dialect. Then she looked at me again and nodded her head. Fortunately the body gesturers also helped me in the conversation with her. In the meantime, I was thinking whether the first language was not her mother tongue but I kept myself communicate verbally with her including using my body gesturers and facial expression.

Body gesturers and facial expressions are referred as a non-verbal communication (Bowles, 2001, 347). In my thinking, I needed to speak louder and know more words in her language so that she could understand and interpret of my actions towards her. I thought of the language barrier that breaks our verbal communication. Caris-Verhallen (1999, pp.808) mention that the language barrier arises when there are individuals comes from a different social background use their own slang or phrases in the conversations. Luckily, those particular body gesturers could make her understand that I was going to feed her lunch.

In my personal opinion, I attended to Mrs. A as a patient to show my empathy because she was unable to feed herself. It was also as my duty to feed her so that I could make sure the patient get the best care in the ward. So my involvement in this nurse-patient relationship does not only restrict to the task-centred communication because (Brandt, 2001, pp.32) define attending as a patient-centred process as wells as to fulfil the basic conditions as a nurse to provide the genuineness, warmth and empathy towards the patient. I was able to improve my non-verbal communication skills in my conversation ...