Interpersonal Skills free essay sample

What are Interpersonal Skills? Interpersonal skills are the life skills we use every day to communicate and interact with other people, individually and in groups. Interpersonal skills include not only how we communicate with others, but also our confidence and our ability to listen and understand. Problem solving, decision making and personal stress management are also considered interpersonal skills. People with strong interpersonal skills are usually more successful in both their professional and personal lives. They are perceived as more calm, confident and charismatic qualities that are often endearing or appealing to others. Being more aware of your interpersonal skills can help you improve and develop them. SkillsYouNeed provides an extensive library of articles to help you learn about and improve your interpersonal skills. A list of Interpersonal Skills could include:  ·Listening Skill  ·Communication Skill  ·Stress Management  ·Verbal Communication  ·Assertivenss  ·Decision Making  ·Problem Solving  ·Non-Verbal Communication How To Develope your Interpersonal Skill? There are a variety of skills that will help you to succeed in different areas of life. We will write a custom essay sample on Interpersonal Skills or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page However, the foundation for many areas of our lives are good interpersonal skills since these are relevant to our personal relationships, social affairs and professional lives and are the basis on which we can develop other life skills. Unlike specialised and technical skills (hard skills), interpersonal skills (soft skills) will be used every day and in every area of our lives. Here, you can find out how to develop specific interpersonal skills including: Find more at: http://www. skillsyouneed. com/interpersonal-skills. Interpersonal Skills free essay sample In this assignment, I need to reflect on the situation that taken place duringmy clinical placement to develop and utilise my interpersonal skills in order tomaintain the therapeutic relationships with my patient. In this reflection, I amgoing to use Gibbs (1988) Reflective Cycle. This model is a recognisedframework for my reflection. Gibbs (1988) consists of six stages to complete onecycle which is able to improve my nursing practice continuously and learningfrom the experience for better practice in the future.The cycle starts with adescription of the situation, next is to analysis of the feelings, third is anevaluation of the experience, fourth stage is an analysis to make sense of theexperience, fifth stage is a conclusion of what else could I have done and finalstage is an action plan to prepare if the situation arose again (NHS, 2006). Bairdand Winter (2005, p. 156) give some reasons why reflection is require in thereflective practice.They state that a reflect is to generate the practice knowledge,assist an ability to adapt new situations, develop self-esteem and satisfaction aswell as to value, develop and professionalizing practice. We will write a custom essay sample on Interpersonal Skills or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page However, Siviter (2004,p. 165) explain that reflection is about gaining self-confidence, identify when toimprove, learning from own mistakes and behaviour, looking at other peopleperspectives, being self-aware and improving the future by learning the past. In my context with the patient, it is important for me to improve thetherapeutic relationship which is the nurse-patient relationship.In the therapeuticrelationship, there is the therapeutic rapport establish from a sense of trust and amutual understanding exists between a nurse and a patient that build in a special verbal so that the message could be understood and do not break the nurse-patient communication. In my opinion, I evaluated that it does not a matter whether it was a patient-centred communication or task-centred communicationbecause both communication mentioned by McCabe (2004) actually doesinvolves communication to the patients. So it was not a problem to argue whichtype of communication involves in my conversation with my patient.After analysed the situation, I could conclude that I was be able to know the skills for effective communication with the patient such as approach the patient, askingquestions, be an active listening, show my empathy and support the patientemotions (Walsh, 2005, p. 34). Actually helping the adult was a good practice indelivering the nursing care among adults. My action plan for the clinical practice in the future, if there were patientsthat I need to help in feeding or other nursing procedure, I would prepare myself better to handle with the patients who would have some difficulty incommunication.This is because, as one of the health care worker, I want thebest care for my patients. So in related to deliver the best care to my patients, Ineed to understand them very well. I have to communicate effectively as this isimportant to know what they need most during warded under my supervision as anurse. According to my experience, I knew that communication was thefundamental part to develop a good relationship. Wood (2006, p. 13) express thata communication is the key foundation of relationship. Therefore a goodcommunication is essential to get know the patient’s individual health status 9 Walsh, 2005, p. 30). Active listening could distinguish the existence of barrier communication when interactions with the patients. This is because, activelistening means listening without making judgement to listen the patients’opinions or complaints which give me chances to be in the patients’ perspective(Arnold, 2007, p. 201). On the other hand, it also crucial to avoid the barriersoccurs in the communication with the patients. I could detect the languagebarriers by interviewing the patients about their health or asking them if theyneeded any help in their daily activities living.However, I would remind myself for not interfere my communication with barriers such as using the open-endedquestions, not attending to non-verbal cues, being criticising and judging, andinterrupting (Funnell et al , 2005, p. 453). Walsh (2005, p. 31) too summary thatmaking stereotyping and making assumptions about patients, perceptions andfirst impression of patients, lack awareness of communication skills are the mainbarriers to communications. I must not judge the patients by making my firstimpression and assumption about the patients but I have to make patients feeldevalued as an individual.I should be capable to respect their fundamentalvalues, beliefs, culture, and individual means of communication (Heath, 2000,p. 27). I would be able to know on how to build rapport with the patients. Thereare eleven ways suggest by Crellin (1998, p. 49) which are becomes visible,anticipate needs, be reliable, listening, stay in control, self-disclosure, care for each patient as an individual, use humour when appropriate, educate the patient,give the patient some control, and use gestures to show some supports. Thisways could help and give me some guidelines to improve my communication 10 skills with the patients. Another important thing to add on my action plan list is toknow which the disabilities of the patients have such as hearing disability, visualimpairment and mental disability. Once I could know the disability that a patienthas, I could well-prepared my method of communication effectively as Heath(2000, p28) mention that communicating with people who was having somehearing impairment, sight impairment and mental health needs required theparticular skills and considerations.Nazarko (2004, p. 9) suggest that do notrepeat if the person could not understand but try to rephrase and speak a littlemore slowly when communicating with the hearing difficulties people. Hearingproblem commonly occurs among adults because of ageing process (Schofield,2002, p. 21). To summarize for my action plan, I would start a communication witha good rapport to know what affects the patients’ ability to communicate well andto avoid barriers in effective communication in future.In conclusion of my reflective assignment, I mention the model that Ichose, Gibbs (1988) Reflective Cycle as my framework of my reflective. I statethe reasons why I am choosing the model as well as some discussion on theimportant of doing reflection in nursing practice. I am able to discuss every stagein the Gibbs (1988) Reflective Cycle about my ability to develop my therapeuticrelationship by using my interpersonal skills with one patient for this reflection