The article below is by a nurse expressing her opinion that the training given to nurses in nursing school, to remain unemotional and uninvolved when helping patients, is too negative. Some emotional involvement with patients, "sharing" as she calls it, is in her opinion, a good thing.
She says
"I think we all have the brain capacity to understand when we are oversharing or crossing the professional lines. (But) To not ‘share’ with our patient denies your patient the very thing that separates our profession from all others."
"By sharing with our patients we strengthen that bond and relationship. The patient trusts us more, the patient’s confidence in our skills and knowledge increases, and by golly the patients actually enjoy our presence."And the practical point she seems to want to make:
"If you don’t share on some small level with our patients and find that common ‘human’ ground, your patient will not find the need or want to share their health and medical challenges with you."That is, she maintains, greater emotional sharing enhances communication, which improves the nurse's power to assist.
Further:
"We have the professional responsibility to do the job we were hired for, but in order to do that job effectively their HAS to be a level of personal "touch."
"Do I tell them my innermost personal secrets? Divulge the hush-hush things I only tell my family or close friends? Confide in them my most personal feelings? Good grief no! That’s the key. You need to know the limit."She doesn't specify what she would consider instances of such inappropriate "sharing," as she calls it, but I suspect we can all think of some examples.
Less clear, and about
which she seems silent, are those "gray" areas where emotional interaction with patients is a bit more dubious, but maybe not crossing any lines. (Or does it?)
For example, if a patient were to engage a nurse in conversation about
the terrible divorce the patient was going through, and the nurse was doing so as well, and then got into a lengthy conversation with the patient on the topic, would that be an acceptable "sharing"?
Or, if the nurse found out that she and the patient just happened to have the same person as a mutual friend, would gossiping about
that friend be acceptable, or not?
It is to be expected that nursing school faculty will push back on this particular nurse's opinion, insisting that the only proper way for nurses to perform their duties effectively is to remain objective and dispassionate, even stoic at times, especially in those situations where powerful emotions of various kinds are already in play in the cases of some patients.
Probably a fine line to walk in practice for anyone, and it will be a wise nurse who knows where the boundaries should be in this kind of situation.
Opinions? Is it okay for nurses to become more emotionally involved with their patients, at least to a degree? Or is the emotionally neutral nurse really the better, maybe even only, way to go?
https://modernnurse.com/oversharing-101/