"Know Your Nurses" Project: An Innovation of Patient Engagement Using Modular System
"Know Your Nurses" Project: An Innovation of Patient Engagement Using Modular System
"Know Your Nurses" Project: An Innovation of Patient Engagement Using Modular System
Introduction – Nurses are needed not only to help patients in physical recovery,
but also the mental recovery. A patient who cannot afford the requirement to
recover because of their physical limitations may experience stress as a sense of
helplessness. It is the nurse’s duty to reduce the psychological stress by helping
physically and providing psychological assistance, such as showing affection and
nurturing. For this reason, it is important that the patients allow themselves to
accept the presence of a nurse. Similarly, it is also important for the nurse to have
a deep concern on the patient in forms of active listening as well as helping
patients to listen to their feelings and empathy. We designed a program namely
"know your nurses" aiming to improve the relationship of patients and nurses by
using the modular system. We implement this program at Kemang Medical Care
(KMC), a hospital in Jakarta. Our goal is to develop a methodology improving
the quality of patients’ care by create a model of effective communication between
patients and nurses.
Results – The result shows the development of the patient's ability to remember
the name of the nurse/ midwife. We found that at first, only 64.2% of patients who
remembered the name of their nurse/ midwife. A month later, we saw an increase
of 29.9%, so in May 83.4% of patients were able to remember the name of their
nurse/ midwife. The next month, the case increased again by 10.4% so that only
7.9% of patients who remained unable to remember the name of their nurse/
midwife. This meant that there was monthly average improvement as much as
20.2% so we were confident in July nearly all patients has been able to remember
the name of their nurse/ midwife. The proportion of nurses’ ability in considering
the needs of the patient. In April, only 72% of nurses could consider the needs of
the patient. In June, 96% of nurses were able to remember the patient's needs.
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Nurses are needed not only to help patients in physical recovery, but also
the mental recovery. A patient who cannot afford the requirement to recover
because of their physical limitations may experience stress as a sense of
helplessness. It is the nurse’s duty to reduce the psychological stress by helping
physically and providing psychological assistance, such as showing affection and
nurturing. Although this relationship cannot slow or stop the pathology of
patients, this relationship may give a significant effect to the patients’ health.
(Lotzkar, 1996). For this reason, it is important that the patient allow themselves
to accept the presence of a nurse. Similarly, it is also important for the nurse to
have a deep concern on the patient in forms of active listening as well as helping
patients to listen to their feelings and empathy (Lotzkar, 1996). In other words, the
relationship between the nurse and the patient is a relationship which is
determined by both parties (Intening, 2014). It is important to have mutual trust,
mutual reciprocity, and caring each other (Mok and Chiu, 2004). On the nurse’s
side, this means that nurses have to have the qualities and personal skills as the
base of the relationship (Mok and Chiu, 2004).
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study on the collectivism context also find out that recognizing the consumers’
names give a significant effect to the quality of the relationships (Ali, 2011).
The illustration above shows that in the nurses themselves, as far as they
are professional, there is no problem in getting to know the patient and providing
the best service in the context of the nurse-patient relationship. The problem is in
the patient who tend to not to personalize the nurse and only mention about their
profession. Calling by names can lead to a family conflict if the nurse-patient
relationship occurs between the nurse and adult patients with the opposite sex and
have intimate relationship in the group (e.g. dating or married). This may suggest
that the nurse is accepted as an in-group of patients by other group members.
Even so, at least patients should know the name of their nurse. This is important
because they can rely more closely to nurses and get better service by
reciprocation principles and social networking among nurses. In situations where
patients meet with a lot of staffs at the hospital, recognition to patients’
appearance and name can accelerate and ease themselves in getting the services
done by the nurses they need.
In line with this idea, we designed a program namely "know your nurses"
aiming to improve the relationship of patients and nurses by using the modular
system. We implement this program at RSIA Kemang/ Kemang Medical Care
(KMC), a hospital in Jakarta. The hospital wants to improve the closeness in
terms of staffs who are less focus in providing nursing care to patients and uneven
nurses’ competence. Our goal is to develop a methodology improving the quality
of patients’ care by create a model of effective communication between patients
and nurses.
2. Method
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listening), therapeutic communication techniques (techniques that allow the
patient to determine the rhythm of communication, encourage patients’
spontaneity, respond to verbal, para verbal, and nonverbal cues, encourage feeling
expression, and encourage patients to make changes), communication techniques
with sensitive patients (hearing problems, vision problems, aphasic, unconscious,
confused, and angry), and recognize obstacles in communication that should not
be done by nurses (Brody, 2003). Moreover, we also teach the boundaries in the
nurses-patients relationship that should not be violated because it shows an
excessive relationship that is contrary to professionalism (CARNA, 2011). In
addition, patients are asked to get to know their nurse better and explain the
importance of this case to their services. From the patient’s perspective, we refer
this program as "Know Your Nurses".
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Table 1. Number of Patients Able to Remember Their Nurses/ Midwifes’ Names
April May
June
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Figure 2 below shows the increasing frequency of nurses visit patients in
one shift. There was also an increase, from six times of visit at the beginning to 11
times of visit in two months.
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Table 2. Increase Trend Indicating Nurse-Patient Relationship
4. Conclusion
4. References
Ali, SHS. 2011. Scaling for better service performance: effects of respect and
rapport on relationship quality in Malaysia. Interdisciplinary Journal of
Research in Business Vol. 1, Issue. 8, August 2011(pp.72-82)
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Intening, V.R. 2014. Nursing Performance of Diploma and Baccalaureate
Graduates in Selected Government Hospitals in Yogyakarta, Indonesia:
Basis for An Action Plan. Proceeding Seminar Ilmiah Nasional
Keperawatan 2nd Adult Nursing Practice: Using Evidence in Care
“Aplikasi Evidence Based Nursing dalam Meningkatkan Patient Safety” .
Eds: NS Dyan dan H Kusuma. Semarang: Universitas Diponegero,
hal.175-182
Mok, E., Chiu, PC. 2004. Nurse–patient relationships in palliative care. Journal of
Advanced Nursing 48(5), 475–483
Okonkwo E.A., Eze A.C., Okoro C.M., Echezona A.J.C. and Azike I.N. 2014.
Individualism-Collectivism as Predictor of Altruism and Reciprocity
Among Nurses. J. of Social Sciences and Public Policy, Vol. 6, Number 1,
Pp. 138 – 150.
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