Your interaction can be verbally or non-verbal and these are both ways of communicating. Non-verbal cues may show anxiety, hurried, troubled, or absent for example and these are all cues that your patient or other coworker might pick up. (Paterson & Zderad 2007) For a nurse communicating with others is vital to the safety of the patient and staff. If a nurse on change of shift forgets to tell another nurse vital information like, “your patient in room 111 had a blood sugar of 45 and I gave him orange juice, but you need to check his blood sugar again in ten minute to make sure it has increased.” Communicating this information is vital and if you don’t get it the patient safety is threatened. Therefore, if we do not effectively communicate, we run the risk of putting our self and our patients safety and care at risk. Communication is a necessary part of nursing to keep patients and others safe, and to also make sure the care is being handled …show more content…
While the nurse is observing or evaluating their patient they are critically thinking, is this normal or abnormal for this patient, is this of concerned, or does this go with the diagnosis that this patient has been admitted for. Critical thinking is a vital skill to have as a nurse, as technology changes it is more imperative that a nurse be able to critically think to ensure patient safety and positive outcomes. Robert & Petersen (2013) Technology has increased care for patient, but it isn’t always effective, for example if you take someone’s blood pressure and it reads 70/40 and the patient doesn’t appear dizzy or unsteady when they walked in the room, you might think that there is something wrong with the machine. In this example, when you observed the patient walking in the room, you where able to think that the reading didn’t match the circumstance, you where able to critically think that there is probably something else wrong, like that machine. This is critical thinking and allows you to keep your patient safe, if you wouldn’t have recognized that the patient wasn’t exhibiting any of the signs of low blood pressure, you could have put the safety of your co-works and patient at risk by calling for emergency help. Being able to critically think allows you to keep your patient safe and to make sure that the care they