Why Interpersonal Skills Are Important in Nursing

If you’re a student considering a career in nursing or about to enter nursing school, there’s a lot to consider. Nurses have to be clinically knowledgeable, but they also have social and relationship skills. Below, we explain why interpersonal skills are important in nursing and what social skills nurses should focus on to thrive in their careers.

Building Positive Relationships With Colleagues

One of the most important reasons nurses need quality communication and social skills is to build positive relationships with coworkers. Nurses typically work with the same people, often over long shifts, and depend on one another to carry out orders and care for patients. It’s critical to the staff’s efficiency and patients’ health for nurses to collaborate well and develop a cohesive care team. Ask any nurse—they’ll tell you that work is much easier when you get along with your colleagues!

Communicating With Patients

Another critical reason why interpersonal skills are important in nursing is communicating with patients. One of the primary duties of many nursing positions is communicating directly with patients and their families—answering questions about treatment, medication, and more. They must also communicate effectively with patients in difficult circumstances, such as de-escalating angry patients. Communicating effectively with patients is crucial to a nurse’s success.

Interpersonal Skills Nurses Need

Clearly, interpersonal skills are important, but what skills should nurses strive for and work on to do their job effectively? There are many, but all nurses should remember three key ones: active listening, patience, and concise communication.

Active Listening

A good skill to start with for nurses is active listening. Active listening isn’t just waiting for the other person, whether another nurse, doctor, or patient, to stop speaking but hearing and thinking critically about what the person is saying. Patients aren’t familiar with medical language, so nurses must actively listen to interpret the patient’s feelings, note them, and translate them to more medical terms for diagnosis.

Patience

Patience isn’t just a virtue—it’s practically a requirement for a nurse to succeed. Patients or families can often be emotional when given discouraging health news, and it’s easy for them to express that frustration and fear at the nurse delivering such news. Nurses must always remain patient, even when dealing with upset or demanding patients and their friends and family.

Concise Verbal Communication

Another critical interpersonal skill nurses should focus on is relaying complex and verbose language and information into simple terms and thinking. Nurses are often responsible for relaying information between doctors and patients or their families, which can mean translating medical information into plain language. Accurately and concisely translating dense language into more manageable terminology makes the nursing job much easier.

As you can see, being a nurse is more than what you learn in class and your textbooks. Having honed interpersonal skills will help you work with your peers better and improve your bedside manner with patients.

FILE #: 183171173 By dusanpetkovic1