ASSIGNMENT SPOTLIGHT - Therapeutic Communication

For this month, I’d like to SPOTLIGHT one of my favorite assignments: Therapeutic Communication (TC). TC is an essential skill in nursing which I put a lot of focus on for the courses that I teach. In this assignment, I post statements that a nursing student would communicate to a patient and then change into a more caring and therapeutic conversation.  

These assignments asks students to demonstrate what they have learned about TC. So with each statement I post, students must explain:

• what they changed 
• why they made the change (with citations from their assigned readings), and
• the process they went through to make the change (and if they had difficulty or not).

This assignment is definitely an interactive activity but is much more engaging and particularly effective when we incorporate the learning tool Voicethread! By using Voicethread, the student’s voice and intonation can be evaluated, which is very important when communicating.

As a Nurse and Online Educator for over 7 years, I have come to believe that most students think they already communicate therapeutically, but when they actually have to interact with patients, they realize that they may have some deficiencies in this area.

I would like to challenge you to also try answering the questions in this assignment just for SOME extra fun!

I hope you enjoy!

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