Whether you’re a practising nurse or completing an online accelerated nursing degree, you’ll understand the importance of effective communication.
For nursing staff, strong communication skills are instrumental to being able to collaborate and work effectively within their teams. Quality nurse communication also supports and improves patient health outcomes by enhancing patient advocacy, health literacy, and informed consent.
This article will explore the importance of communication in nursing – discussing what effective nurse communication involves, the benefits, and how we can learn to communicate better.
What is effective nurse communication?
For a nurse practitioner, effective communication is a crucial part of their role.
Yes, nurses need to be able to communicate effectively with each other – particularly as they are often required to work collaboratively toward achieving collective goals in patient care. For this to work, nurse communication needs to be both solutions-focused and decisive, as well as respectful and professional. Effective nurse communication requires the nurse practitioner to be calm and level-headed and to be able to get their points across in a clear, concise, and easy-to-understand manner.
Effective nurse communication doesn’t just relate to communicating professionally among medical staff, however. Nurse practitioners must also be able to relay information effectively to patients – in a language they can understand. On this subject, it’s also key to note that language barriers are yet another challenge nurses often need to navigate: as many as 26 million American patients have limited English language skills. Irrespective of whether their patients are native English speakers or speak English as a second language, being able to communicate effectively allows nurses to enhance patient outcomes in the healthcare system in many beneficial ways.
What are the benefits?
Effective nurse communication benefits healthcare processes in several ways;
Better Staff Collaboration
As mentioned earlier, effective communication facilitates improved team collaboration. This is a central aspect of working in a team environment such as a nursing ward in a healthcare facility.
By ensuring that they are communicating with clarity, decisiveness, and, just as importantly, openness and transparency, nursing staff can work more cohesively together and ensure that their team environment is both productive and harmonious.
Enhanced Patient Health Literacy
When nurses work to educate and advise patients through honest, informative, and clear communication, patient health literacy is enhanced. This is important, as increased health literacy also facilitates informed patient consent, as well as better patient compliance with treatment plans.
As a key liaison between patients and other medical practitioners, nursing staff also play an essential role in ensuring patients feel guided and supported during their treatments and that they fully understand what they are consenting to in terms of their medical care.
Patient Advocacy
Finally, as effective communicators, nurses can better advocate for their patients. Speaking up for patient rights, supporting patients and their families, and advocating for the best treatment options are just some of the ways effective nurse communication promotes patient advocacy in the healthcare system.
How can we learn to communicate better?
Learning to communicate effectively takes practice. Some of the key ways we can become better communicators and improve our communication skills include;
Learning to Listen
If we want to communicate well, we need to be able to listen. This means ensuring we’re listening actively, repeating back key points, and asking questions when there’s something we don’t understand.
Asking for Feedback
Another important element of effective communication is to ensure that others understand what we are conveying. To do this, it’s important to ask people for their feedback and confirm their understanding of the points we’re attempting to relay.
Using non-verbal cues
Non-verbal cues such as eye contact are also essential if we want to connect and communicate effectively with others. Using these types of cues also ensures we are genuinely engaging with others when we are interacting with them.
As discussed today, being able to communicate effectively is an essential part of a nurse practitioner’s role.
Effective nurse communication not only allows for better team collaboration among staff, but it can also improve outcomes for patients.
For nurses who want to become better communicators, key skills to develop include active listening, using non-verbal cues, and asking for feedback to confirm understanding.
