After years of nursing, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve run into difficult patients, not to mention anxious and agitated family members. Like any other industry that works alongside people, nurses like you and me often struggle to find beneficial ways to build trust and treat challenging patients. But effective communication is more essential to your patient’s treatment—and your own mental sanity—than you might think.
Fortunately, plenty of techniques can change the way you connect with your patients for the better. Between understanding why patients and families are difficult to begin with and using effective socializing methods, including active listening and therapeutic communication, you can easily enhance the bonds you share with patients.
Let’s face it: being a nurse is stressful enough; having positive interactions with patients shouldn’t add to your daily stressors. But, while it’s not always easy, it doesn’t have to be impossible. To give you a bit of insight into successfully connecting with troublesome patients, let me enlighten you with some indispensable advice that will make your job (and your life) a LOT easier.
What Causes Negative Attitudes in Patients & Families?
Before we can dive into my most beneficial relationship-building tips, it’s essential to acknowledge the various reasons why patients and families might be ill-tempered and what makes it so tough to connect. As nurses, having a deeper understanding of what our challenging patients could potentially be dealing with mentally can be worthwhile when it comes to enduring confrontational situations.
One of the most common emotions that both patients and families face while visiting the hospital is anxiety. And, more often than not, depression lies on the backburner. I get it—it can be hard to understand how hospital anxiety feels. We kind of have to like the hospital since we basically live there. But it’s a real thing. And, research has shown [AR1] that the longer patients are admitted to the hospital, symptoms of depression and anxiety become more severe.
Anxiety is especially prevalent in patients who are waiting for surgical procedures or those with hard-to-treat conditions. That said, patients often have difficulty coping with diagnoses and nerve-wracking treatments. Then, toss in the various medications and conditions that cause confusion, mood disruption, and frustration. Whether it’s the mere stress of finding themselves in the hospital or anger resulting from an unfortunate diagnosis, the rollercoaster of emotions that patients face can make them defensive and uncooperative.
As for family members of patients, caregiver role strain is often the underlying culprit to negative attitudes and difficulty coping. Whether a loved one is facing the financial responsibility of your patient or they feel forced to hand caregiver responsibilities over to you, caregiver role strain can lead to considerable anxiety in family members, which generally increases agitation.
All in all, when patients and family members are already in conflict with their inner feelings, having positive interactions with nurses becomes that much more difficult.
Why it is Essential to Build Trust with Patients
As a nurse, building trust with your patients makes all the difference in your nurse-patient interactions. It can become all too easy to get in the groove of working with multiple patients every single day—the job can easily be monotonous.
Nonetheless, as nurses, it’s essential to avoid becoming desensitized to the human beings that lie in each room. The hospital might be our day-to-day lives, but each patient is struggling with something different, and each one deserves a happy and helpful nurse by their side to help them through the entire experience. While we all have that one patient we dread interacting with, it’s crucial to show empathy and help patients trust us to give them quality care. After all, caring is what we do.
Building trust and forming positive relationships with your patients is beneficial in more than one way. Not only does a positive bond with a nurse make their hospital stay much more pleasant, but patients who feel that their nurses genuinely care for them are also more willing to accept treatment as it’s from a person they trust. And building trust with your patients will, at the very least, help you avoid running to the bathroom to have a quick cry before heading in to see your next patient—the positive interactions will help your workday go a lot smoother.
Tips for Improving Nurse-Patient Interactions
I understand that it doesn’t make the situation any easier to merely recognize the reasoning behind a rude attitude, especially when they’re screaming at you and calling you names. (If you’ve yet to run into this kind of experience, which is almost impossible at any point in the nursing field, just know that you most certainly will—all in due time, my friend.)
So, to help you navigate even the most insufferable situations with patients and families, I’ve compiled a list of some particularly useful tips for improving—or maybe just surviving—unfavorable nurse-patient interactions.
1. Establish Boundaries
Before you even enter any interaction with a patient, especially a potentially disagreeable one, it’s a significant benefit to set some clear boundaries. Ensure that you know when to walk away from a negative conversation and when to put an abusive patient in their place. And, when you run into tough interactions, stick to your guns, and let a difficult patient or family member know when unacceptable behavior is, well, unacceptable.
2. Try Not to Take Anything Personally
As I mentioned before, unpleasant patients are almost always struggling to cope with their situations. So, to maintain your cool and ensure that you can do your job the best you can, don’t take any anger or frustration personally. When a patient lashes out, they’re almost always reacting to their circumstances, not you.
3. Watch Your Body Language
Believe it or not, your body language can make or break a patient’s willingness to trust you. If your facial expression is saying one thing and your voice is saying another, your patient will likely feel rejected and unable to rely on you. Try to keep a relaxed and open posture and maintain eye contact to help them know you’re on their side.
Therapeutic Communication Techniques for Building Rapport & Strengthening Relationships
Sometimes, a difficult patient can look very different from those who express outward anger and defensiveness. In many cases, unpleasantness can be as simple as patients being unresponsive or cold, which often results from a lack of rapport. You’re the first person they see in the morning and the last person they see at night, making communication one of the most crucial aspects of your patients’ care.
Therapeutic communication promotes quality care by encouraging patients to express thoughts, feelings, and ideas. This way, patients can work through their emotions on their own, while you support their physical and mental well-being. Here are a few therapeutic communication techniques to help strengthen bonds and build connections with patients from the get-go:
Active Listening
You likely already listen to everything your patients say. But, it’s especially helpful to show them that you’re interested in what they’re saying. Active listening helps patients know that you care about their thoughts and feelings. Giving non-verbal cues, like nodding and eye contact, along with verbal cues, like saying, “I see,” during conversation can encourage a patient to continue talking because they know you’re listening.
Incorporate Humor and Hope
Appropriately bringing a sense of lightheartedness to a situation can help patients feel closer to you and build rapport a lot quicker. Many patients have difficulty coping with their circumstances, but having someone offer hope in a difficult time by communicating their strength and perseverance can also form bonds and help them know that they can rely on you.
Offer Yourself and Your Time
Whether your patients are in the hospital or their own homes, loneliness is often a significant contributor to anxiety and stress. At times, it can be tough to know when a patient is feeling lonely, but offering yourself and your time to each one can help them feel valued and give them a sense of companionship as they face their circumstances. Offering to eat with them, take a walk with them, or even just sit with them can make a world of difference in your relationships.
Make Observations
Paying close attention to your patients is another key to building trust and rapport with them. Making observations and comments on their demeanor, activity, and even facial expressions can open the door to conversation. Not only does this help your patients feel like you genuinely care about them, but it also can be a way to recognize symptoms that might otherwise get swept under the rug.
Accept and Acknowledge Your Patients
Nobody likes to feel as if they aren’t being heard, especially when it comes to receiving medical care. That said, non-judgmentally accepting everything your patients want to tell you and acknowledging their thoughts can help them feel much closer to you. This idea lies hand-in-hand with active listening, and little things like focusing, asking for clarification on comments, and merely letting them know that you understand can be a game-changer in the way your patients communicate with you.
The Bottom Line
Every nurse faces a tough patient or family member during their career–it’s inevitable. But, fortunately, there is always an avenue for successfully navigating difficult situations. And, by incorporating therapeutic communication with your patients (especially those who are challenging), you can make connections and strengthen bonds that will help increase compliance in the long run.
If you’re looking for more tips on succeeding in the nursing field, feel free to reach out to me directly; I’d love to connect with you!
[AR1]Not sure if you’d like to link it, but here is the study where I found this info: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4852078/
