What I've Learned

What is a therapeutic relationship? This is an ongoing topic mentioned time and time again both in nursing school and clinical settings. In class, we have been taught that making therapeutic relationships is a concept that encompasses being person-centered in our care, which involves rights to respect, independence, and empathy (Sims, 2022). This holistic approach to healthcare applies to relationships, environments, and methods of care. According to the CNO, the components of a therapeutic nurse-client relationship include: "trust, respect, professional intimacy, empathy" with careful consideration to maintain professional boundaries and contributing holistically to patient wellbeing (CNO, 2019).

During my clinical experience, I demonstrated therapeutic nursing through the use of eye contact, smiling, reassurance, patience, empathy, understanding, and active listening during interactions with residents. Some of the positive feedback included compliments on my skills as a nurse, smiling, gratitude-driven touching such as a pat on the arm or a kiss on the hand, or statements such as "I don't feel so lonely anymore" being said after a conversation.

The most important aspect of a therapeutic relationship has been incorporating empathy and independence in everyday practice, with every patient, and in every interaction. Not only is it important to attempt to feel what a patient feels to give them optimal care, but it is also vital to ensure that independence, dignity, and free will is respected in every area of care possible.

Therapeutic nursing practice can and should be included in any and all nursing practice. For example, a full client assessment including the Functional Assessment Scale (FAST) can include therapeutics in the following ways: (Balsdon, 2022)

• Health assessment: build a trusting relationship with the patient, use intrapersonal skills to gather health history after the relationship is established, show active listening during all conversations

• Physical Assessment: ask consent before performing any physical procedure, clarify any special needs/contraindications against procedures, let patients speak for themselves, and listen to their subjective pain/illness experiences

• FAST: When performing the FAST assessment, encourage independence and show patience in all tasks/activities, treating all objective and subjective data as being of equal importance, and don't let biases and/or predetermined judgments about patients interfere with any assessments (ex. expecting dementia patients to forget who you are)

As stated above, Therapeutic Nursing should be at the forefront of healthcare practices globally, as it is implementable in all aspects of the profession. With a little extra time, thought, and care given to each patient, positive health-promotion occurrences will result,