Effective use of communication as a vital tool for trust development

<p>Nonye Aghanya</p>

Effective use of communication as a vital tool for trust development

Nonye Aghanya

Family Nurse Practitioner, USA

: J Nurs Patient Care

Abstract

Poor communication skills greatly contribute to the mistrust that is often experienced between patients and clinicians. It’s important to note that patients often experience high levels of apprehension during their clinical/hospital visits. Sometimes, such high anxiety levels manifest as various patient attitudes that could become a deterrent to the development of productive clinician-patient relationship. It is vital for nurses/clinicians to refrain from using a one-size-fits-all communication approach for all patient encounters because people have different personalities and backgrounds and thus perceive and react differently to the same information presented to them. The key for trust development is in the delivery method of information. To attain trust development through effective communication, the clinician’s communication style must be tailored to each patient’s personality, attitude and back ground. Naturally, many if not all nurses and clinicians put their best foot forward during each patient’s consultation with the expectation to make a connection with the patient and have a productive conversation. It’s important to note that realistically, however hard a clinician may try to make a great impression, due to various reasons, there are still many patients who would not achieve a decent level of comfort with the clinician. As a result, an honest and productive conversation is not achieved which hinders the development of a successful clinician-patient relationship. Often, effective communication between two individuals does not happen naturally at first, it must take a conscious effort on the clinician’s part to be realized. Do you know that there is a strategic approach to experience a stress-free, successful consultation with each patient for improved trust development and productivity? The book, Simple Tips to Developing a Productive Clinician-Patient Relationship gives simple tips to achieve this for 16 different patient attitudes/behaviors.