Reflections: The Power of Patient Connections to Deliver Emotional and Spiritual Care supports the nursing student’s ability to address the spiritual and emotional needs of the patient through affective learning strategies. Many times, students overestimate their ability to comfort others because they are caring people. When confronted with an emotionally charged communication experience, the student frequently realizes he or she does not know how to respond. This fully online text provides powerful examples of patient and family situations that are uniquely presented using case studies and videos followed by the opportunity for students to reflect on the patient’s experience, form an emotional connection to the person or people in the situation, and to develop behaviors and verbal responses that demonstrate authentic and therapeutic communication and care.
Nursing education has traditionally focused on the science and skills of nursing practice. Students have been instructed on the importance of caring but are not typically provided the opportunity to practice potential compassionate responses in a safe learning environment. Appropriate responses are a source of professional and personal fulfillment for the nurse and are essential to provide compassionate heart-centered care to decrease patient’s anxiety, promote the patient’s feelings of being cared for, and provide a healing environment.
A unique resource, this text blends conceptual information with practical tools and strategies to use with patients by describing research and evidence-based techniques while translating them into actionable tools. Each chapter contains objectives, reflection questions, quizzes, definitions of key terms, case studies. Also included is a chart of Key Phrases and Caring Behaviors© developed by the authors. In addition, a Pre-Assessment Scale is used to determine the student’s baseline knowledge of spiritual and emotional care prior to completing the activities in the book. A Post-Assessment survey is also provided for the instructor to assess the improvement of the student’s comfort providing spiritual and emotional care after completing the activities in the book as well as evaluate the effectiveness of the text. Finally, a reference containing comforting quotes is also accessible to students.
Upon completion of this content students state they feel more comfortable to address and respond to the emotional and spiritual needs of their patients.
Appropriate Courses for this text:
The customizable text is divided into volumes that can be easily divided between two nursing courses.
Volume 1
Introduces the student to the concepts and differences between Religion, Spirituality, and Health. A focus is placed on the importance of providing spiritual and emotional care to the patient and family. A narrated PowerPoint provides an overview of historical changes that have impacted the importance of customer service in health care with emphasis placed on the patient’s view of nursing interactions and the powerful association these interactions have on patient satisfaction of care.
Volume 2
Provides a deeper immersion into responses and actions to specific statements and behaviors of patients and family members demonstrating spiritual and emotional distress. The document providing Key Phrases and Caring Behaviors © is provided after all activities are completed and students have developed confidence in their own ability to respond to people in spiritual and emotional distress appropriately.
Authors
Palmira Good has been a professor in the Polk State College Nursing program since 1975. A brief interruption of teaching full-time occurred in 2007 when hospitals were responding to the demands placed on them by the Accountable Care Act. Dr. Good realized the disconnection between what was being taught in the classroom with the changes that were going to impact healthcare such as value-based purchasing, utilizing evidence-based standardization of routine procedures to promote safety; development of Rapid Response Teams, the introduction of electronic medical records, and the impact the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey would have on nursing. When Dr. Good returned to the classroom fulltime she began integrating the explanation and value of the changes as well as how the changes would impact nursing and healthcare into her classroom and lectures. Research on what influenced patient satisfaction provided powerful insight into the importance of what nurses say and do at the bedside. She began developing simulations in the classroom that focused on emotional and spiritual needs of the patient and how nurses should respond. Dr. Good received her Bachelors and Masters Degrees from the University of Florida and her Doctorate of Education Degree from Southeastern University.
Joan Connors began teaching nursing in 2004 and in 2011, she left the classroom for three years and served as education manager at a local hospital. It was in that role, that the importance of supporting newly licensed RNs became apparent as many had difficulty addressing the emotional needs of those entrusted to their care. Expressing frustration, nurses new to the profession expressed their inadequacies in dealing with those in emotional distress. Upon joining Polk State College, Joan joined the work started by Pal Good. Together they recognized the need for a tool to aid students in what to say and do when facing an emotional situation. Backed by research, their work was published in Nurse Educator, March 2017. Together they complied the resource so many students have found useful in their practice. Dr. Connors is a proud alumnus of Polk State College, Associate degree in Nursing. She received her Master’s in Nursing Education from Florida Southern College and Doctorate of Education from Southeastern University in 2017.