Analysis of nurses' verbal communication with patients.

Abstract

Nursing educators and practitioners recognize the importance of a nurse's ability to communicate effectively with patients (La Monica, 1979; Travelbee, 1971). The question is, do nurses employ the kinds of communicative behaviours believed by a number of researchers (Brammer, 1979; Carkhuff, 1969; Carkhuff & Berenson, 1977; Egan, 1975) to be therapeutic patients? Some kind of communication, verbal and/or nonverbal, occurs during encounter a nurse has with a patient. No matter how one may try, one cannot not communicate. Activity or inactivity, words or silence all have message value (Watzlawick, Beavin, & Jackson, 1967, pp. 48-49). Maslow (1965) has pointed out that every person is a psychotherapeutic influence or a psychopathogenic on everybody he has contact with . (p. 77). Carkhuff and Berenson (1977) charge that the interactions between helpers and helpees have a for better or worse effect upon the helpee (p. 5; p. 228). Accordingly, the communication of a nurse forms a vital component of patient care _ good or ill. In defining therapeutic communication Rossiter (1975) suggests communication can be therapeutic a patient in two ways: by eliciting accurate information which in turn affects patient care, and secondly, in and of itself, communication has health promoting effects.