Communicating with Other Nurses
Included In This Lesson
Study Tools For Communicating with Other Nurses
Outline
Overview
- Communication between coworkers
- Communication between units
Nursing Points
General
- Confidence
- Everyone has the same large priority which is to care for the patients
- Don’t be afraid to admit you were wrong or apologize
- Understand different units have different priorities
- Life saving versus healing and medical management
- Conflict resolution
- Deal with the problem at hand
- Have open dialogue
- Talk it out
- Remember we all have the same big goal
- Provide care to the patient
- Identify the different needs or smaller goals
- Brainstorm
- Find compromise and solution for each
- Implement solution
Transcript
In this lesson I will explain how to best communicate with other nurses.
Communication with other nurses could involve just coworkers you are with everyday, nurses on other units that you might need help from, or a transfer of care to another unit. Let’s look at how we can best communicate in these situations.
When communicating no matter what it is have confidence. Everyone has the same large priority or goal which is to provide the best care for the patients. Understand different units have different priorities. Some units like the emergency department or ICU are more about the life saving versus getting the patient to do self care or cleaned up. So that should be kept in mind. Priorities come first. And unless you’ve worked on this other unit before you can’t put yourself in their shoes so be respectful of that. You will talk to nurses constantly throughout your shifts and it will become easy but the biggest things are just to be confident and try to understand all sides. Try to put yourselves in their shoes. And most importantly don’t be afraid to admit if you are wrong in conversation and something you have said. Sometimes even when you think you have good communication there will be conflict so I want to talk a little about this conflict resolution.
Conflict resolution is going to involve a lot of communication. There needs to be open dialogue to talk it out and deal with the problem at hand. Remember we all have the same big goal and that is to provide excellent care to the patient. So if each party can Identify the different needs and then work to find a compromise or solution to accommodate everyone. Then we can Implement the solution. There will be times that you have to agree to disagree and just walk away but in most situations a solution will need to be found so performing these resolution tactics can be helpful. A conflict resolution I was involved occurred recently. I work in a nursery where we care for the baby at delivery until they are 2 hours old. At that time they are transferred to the mother infant unit. We were getting phone calls from them whenever something went wrong. For instance they would call and say, “You sent us a cold baby”, which we termed “cold shaming” or most recently they called to let us know that we sent a baby that was grunting and then dropped its temperature. Well that was where we drew the line and had to have big communication with the nurses on the unit. We had to let them know we would never purposefully send a cold baby, right? And that if a baby is grunting it is having respiratory difficulty which means the provider should have been called first not us. We didn’t make that baby have breathing trouble or drop it’s temperature. Babies change fast and that one had become septic from delivery. So in this conversation we gave our side and reminded them that babies change fast and they are capable of warming a baby if cold or doing next steps because they are nurses too. They explained their frustrations that sometimes they are busy doing other things so its hard when the babies are not stable. They agreed that it was not our fault and they would handle it differently. This communication needed to happen and my unit had avoided it for a while and in the end I wish we had talked about it the first time it happened and shut it down with a solution because the conversation did go really well. We each explained our sides and understood the other side and respected each other.
You can’t avoid communicating with other nurses so let’s review the key points. You have to be confident and confident in what you believe. Show respect because it will make the communication go smoother and be productive. Keep in mind that there are going to be be different perspectives and priorities between units. And part of having communication with other nurses is going to be using good conflict resolution.
Practice conflict resolution tactics and work to be a good communicator with other nurses.. Now, go out and be your best selves today. And, as always, happy nursing.
Tiona RN
Concepts Covered:
- Studying
- Medication Administration
- Adult
- Emergency Care of the Cardiac Patient
- Intraoperative Nursing
- Microbiology
- Cardiac Disorders
- Vascular Disorders
- Nervous System
- Upper GI Disorders
- Central Nervous System Disorders – Brain
- Immunological Disorders
- Fundamentals of Emergency Nursing
- Dosage Calculations
- Understanding Society
- Circulatory System
- Concepts of Pharmacology
- Hematologic Disorders
- Newborn Care
- Adulthood Growth and Development
- Disorders of Pancreas
- Postoperative Nursing
- Pregnancy Risks
- Neurological
- Postpartum Complications
- Noninfectious Respiratory Disorder
- Peripheral Nervous System Disorders
- Learning Pharmacology
- Prenatal Concepts
- Tissues and Glands
- Developmental Considerations
- Factors Influencing Community Health
- Childhood Growth and Development
- Prenatal and Neonatal Growth and Development
- Developmental Theories
- Basic
- Neonatal
- Pediatric
- Gastrointestinal
- Newborn Complications
- Labor Complications
- Fetal Development
- Terminology
- Labor and Delivery
- Postpartum Care
- Communication
- Basics of Mathematics
- Statistics
- Basics of Sociology
- Cardiovascular
- Shock
- Shock
- Disorders of the Posterior Pituitary Gland
- Endocrine
- Disorders of the Thyroid & Parathyroid Glands
- Liver & Gallbladder Disorders
- Lower GI Disorders
- Respiratory
- Delegation
- Perioperative Nursing Roles
- Acute & Chronic Renal Disorders
- Respiratory Emergencies
- Disorders of the Adrenal Gland
- Documentation and Communication
- Preoperative Nursing
- Legal and Ethical Issues
- Oncology Disorders
- Female Reproductive Disorders
- Musculoskeletal Trauma
- Renal Disorders
- Male Reproductive Disorders
- Sexually Transmitted Infections
- Infectious Respiratory Disorder
- Integumentary Disorders
- Emergency Care of the Trauma Patient
- Urinary Disorders
- Musculoskeletal Disorders
- EENT Disorders
- Neurological Emergencies
- Disorders of Thermoregulation
- Neurological Trauma
- Basics of NCLEX
- Integumentary Important Points
- Multisystem
- Test Taking Strategies
- Urinary System
- Emergency Care of the Neurological Patient
- Central Nervous System Disorders – Spinal Cord
- Respiratory System
- Emergency Care of the Respiratory Patient
- Cognitive Disorders
- Anxiety Disorders
- Depressive Disorders
- Trauma-Stress Disorders
- Substance Abuse Disorders
- Bipolar Disorders
- Psychotic Disorders
- Concepts of Mental Health
- Eating Disorders
- Personality Disorders
- Health & Stress
- Psychological Emergencies
- Somatoform Disorders
- Prioritization
- Community Health Overview
- Gastrointestinal Disorders
- Integumentary Disorders
- Respiratory Disorders
- Neurologic and Cognitive Disorders
- Renal and Urinary Disorders
- Infectious Disease Disorders
- EENT Disorders
- Hematologic Disorders
- Cardiovascular Disorders
- Musculoskeletal Disorders
- Endocrine and Metabolic Disorders
- Oncologic Disorders
- Behavior
- Emotions and Motivation
- Growth & Development
- Intelligence and Language
- Psychological Disorders
- State of Consciousness
- Note Taking
- Concepts of Population Health
- Basics of Human Biology