The Importance Of Effective Communication And Teamwork

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This reflective assignment will focus on a complex communication scenario regarding a patient who refused to engage in all aspects of his care. The importance of effective communication and teamwork in delivering patient centred care will be addressed and how it can influence the engagement of the individual once establishing a therapeutic relationship.
It 's an NMC requirement that all nurses must use excellent communication and interpersonal skills and therapeutic principles to support patient centred care and engage in professional caring relationships (Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) 2010). In this particular scenario, nursing staff were faced with an individual who was difficult to engage, which lead to problems in establishing whether his lack of engagement was having a detrimental effect on his health. The service user had a queried diagnosis of borderline personality disorder and spent the majority of his time in his bedroom and refused to interact with staff and peers on the ward. He refused to attend ward rounds and did not want to see other members of the multidisciplinary team. This made it difficult for the nurses to monitor his mental state whilst respecting his wishes to be left alone. Although observation can provide crucial information for nurses during the decision making process (Heron 2001) it is also necessary to intervene and to try and build a therapeutic relationship with the individual in order to understand and address his social, spiritual and psychological needs.
In order to address this issue and increase the service user 's engagement with the nursing team, staff followed the psychological framework of the humanistic model in order to promote relationship centred care. Humanistic psychology embodi...

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...ffectively communicated back to other members of the multi-disciplinary team. It 's important that critical information is effectively communicated as it 's an essential component of risk management. Similarly, effective thorough handovers are essential to nursing practice in terms of continuity and quality of patient care. An example of miscommunication or missing information contributes to a number of patient safety incidents (British Medical Association 2004). The nursing staff on the ward delivered both verbal and written handover at the end of the shift to the new team, in order to ensure vital information surrounding the patient 's wellbeing were passed on as research suggests that a typed sheet with a verbal handover results in minimal data loss which is therefore likely to reduce patient safety incidents and improve patient centred care (Pothier et al. 2013).

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