Importance Of Personal Contact And Positive Relationships

required for personal contact and positive relationships.

“There are no ‘golden rules’ to learn in order to become an effective carer – we each do the job differently according to our own personalities” (David Tossell & Richard Webb 1994)

“Despite the fact that we generally think of communication as verbal, non-verbal communication accounts for a large percentage of human interaction. Body language such as facial expression, eye contact, vocal tone, pace and pitch, gesture and body posture can convey both attitude and emotion which we process more speedily than language” (Iggulden et al 2009).

Interpersonal skills

The set of abilities enabling a person to interact positively and work effectively with others

Development of the interpersonal

This emotional connection can rarely be total, but by utilizing our skills of perception and assessing the physiological status of the other person, we should be able to consider their circumstances and then utilize our own memories and experiences to align ourselves to some extent with their emotions.

Empathy can be seen in everyday clinical situations – for example, when you are feeding a patient/client, you may find that you open your own mouth, at the moment you want the patient to take in food. Infectious laughter, known as the ‘giggles’ is another good example, laughter can spread throughout the group even if the joke is not shared by everyone in that group. However emotion is communicable rather than infectious.

Where there is no empathy the nurse will have no appreciation of how the patient perceives their situation. There will be lack of warmth between the two people and no sense of connection. We often identify this as ‘coldness’ in an attempt to describe the emotional distance encountered. This distance leads to a lack of trust, openness and honesty because to be trusting, open and honest in this situation could leave a person very