Effective Communication in Nursing: Responding to Patient's Pain and Concerns

Establishing Trust in the Nurse-Patient Relationship

Task:

There are 2 discussions below. Comment or make suggestions on each.

Nurse: Hello, my name is Tonya and I will be your nurse for today. The secretary said you would like to see the nurse.
 
Betty: Yes! I had open heart surgery 3 days I was getting my pain medications every 6 hours and now my pain medication is late.
 
Nurse: I’m so sorry you are in pain. I will figure out what is going on with your pain medication. 
 
Betty: Well I want it figured out because I am in pain.
 
Nurse: Yes ma’am, I will look into this. It looks like here in your chart that it was given to you 2 hours ago. Was that does not helpful.
 
Betty: Well yes it helped some but I’m still in pain.
 
Nurse: I’m so sorry you are still in pain. One of the reasons we have a schedule for any medications is for your safety we do not want you to have to much in a short period of time it can really harm you. How is you pain right now on a scale from 0-10 with 10 being the worst pain and 0 being no pain?
 
Betty: My pain is about a 3/10
 
Nurse: Ok, let’s see if we can do something different for the pain in the meantime to help with the pain, like relaxation techniques, or a back massage and I will page the physician and see if we can do a different some different type of medication to relive some pain. How does that sound.
 
Betty: As long as it helps the pain.
 
Nurse: Ok I will work on getting this done for you.
 
Betty: Thank you so much. And thank you for listening to what I had to say.
 
Sometimes all a patient needs is someone to be present and listen to what they have to say and fix the issue they have. Most of the time patients don’t mean to be confrontational they just are upset or in pain. The goal of mindfulness is to be present in the moment to simply notice with no thought or judgement, and without jumping into planning mode. (Clancy,2018)
What mattered most to Betty in this conversation was that she wanted to know why her pain medications were late and that she was in pain.
The establishment of trust in the registered nurse (RN)-patient relationship promotes patient engagement and improves the likelihood that the patient will be an active member of the patient care team. Leslie, J. L., & Lonneman, W. (2016). Sometimes making suggestions to the patient to get their thoughts on their care and gets them involved in how they want the care to go. Patients are not always presented with other options to pain management other than medication.      
           
How you respond to a patient’s anger will have an impact, but staying calm and professional is not always easy, especially if you are as frustrated as them about what’s going on. (Day-Calder , M. 2018). Staying calm and peaceful most of the time also helps calm the patient who is upset or angry. The bible talks about being a peacemaker in Mathew 5:8-9 Blessed are  the pure in heart; for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called children of God.