Title: Nursing competence: Building the nursing interactive field in BSN students
Abstract:
Nursing competence is highly dependent upon the nurse’s ability to communicate both verbally and non-verbally with their patients. The nurse’s ability to pick up on the overall sense of the patient’s well-being or lack thereof is what comprises the Nursing Interactive Field. Nursing students develop their skills throughout their program, however, a mainstay of psychiatric/mental health nursing is improving and further development of communication skills. Therapeutic Communication is the foundation for developing such skills. Caring and empathy are developed and focused upon in therapeutic communication. Dumas (2010) noted that” Inter-brain Synchrony” is the basic foundation of social skills and social competency. It starts with the mother-infant interactions and continues through in the child’s interactions with family and friends. Unfortunately, Dumas noted that social media and remote communication have interfered with this skill development. Dumas noted that inter-brain synchrony does not take place over social media/remote communication. We’ve found that utilizing therapeutic communication for nursing students as extremely helpful in addressing the decreasing social competency with our young people who are so heavily invested in their social media. The Nursing Interactive Field is the professional aspect of inter-brain synchrony. We teach the students therapeutic communication skills, have them practice them with each other and in their psychiatric-mental health clinical setting. Teaching these skills assists the students in developing and solidifying their nursing social interaction competence. The students inform me that they use the skills in their medical – surgical clinicals and find that they interact with their patients on a more satisfying level. Needless to say, when the student is competent in social interaction, that student is ready to do patient centered care.
