This class was taken during the second semester of my sophomore year of college. It was here, as the course title describes, that I learned everything I need to know about the fundamentals of nursing practice. Over the course of the semester we studied how to think like a nurse, which aspects of patient care are our priorities, how to take care of different populations, and how to best care for each varying disease process.
This was a very fascinating class to me. It forced me to try and think ahead on patient needs. This class was forward thinking, meaning one would take their understanding of a certain disease or condition, and one would predict the needs of the patient so you can best provide care for them. This class gave me a new appreciation for nurses because it showed me that understanding complex issues of each condition is simply the basic foundation of what nurses do. Providing care is not a passive act that any person can do, but a thoughtful process that takes intentional planning and loving, unconditional work.
This class educated the students on how to best provide comfort to their patients, how to therapeutically communicate with each patient and their family, predicting their needs, how to plan for priority interventions, and how to prepare for any expected situation. How to provide care was the main focal point of this class. How to put ourselves in the shoes of our patients so that we may better understand their needs and upcoming requirements was a main subject throughout the course. How the body responds and recovers to stress was a phenomenon studied deeply through this course.
Therapeutic communication seems very simple on paper. On tests, it was always the easiest response to pick out from the rest. But once you are in the field and you are face-to-face with your patient, it is an entirely different ball game. Personally, each lesson seemed to disappear from my mind the second I saw the patient. It took extra effort during my studies to drill into my mind how best to communicate with my patients and their families in order to pass along crucial information in a manner that they will all understand. The difference between empathy and sympathy needs to be understood to best provide therapeutic communication.
Overall this was an incredibly crucial class to my education and my nursing career. I had a lot of fun learning this content!