A Framework for Caring Communication

Price (includes one year of access and CE):  US$14 Course Code: 7SENNF-PRV-09-ddn24 CE: 2.50 Hours. Post Test Score Required for Successful Completion: 80%

Course Overview:

Clients with developmental disabilities who have cognitive, speech, motor, or sensory limitations may require accommodations to communicate in healthcare situations. After reviewing the effect of context on communications, this module examines how eleven different communication skills and fourteen communication barriers can either promote or impede developmentally appropriate therapeutic communication among nurses, clients, and caregivers. The module discusses syndromes and conditions that commonly cause communication challenges, and describes behaviors that can serve as communication, with special emphasis on how these behaviors can help nurses to assess subjective indicators of pain and other discomfort in clients who are nonverbal. Augmentative and alternative communication methods, including gestures, low-tech, and high-tech communication aids are discussed. This module emphasizes "person-first" language and offers multiple suggestions for ensuring that the nurse respectfully promotes mutually understood communication in clinical situations.

Course Objectives:

After completion of this learning activity, the learner will be able to:

• describe basic communication skills and how each contributes to effective communication.
• describe selected behaviors that characterize communication in some people with developmental disabilities.
• apply elements of caring to the concept that a person with developmental disabilities has the ability to communicate meaningfully when partners intervene to decrease factors that interfere with communication.
• apply therapeutic communication skills that support and facilitate the communication efforts of a person with developmental disabilities.
• identify instances of nontherapeutic communications.
• describe select augmentive communication methods and tools.
• apply elements of caring to the concept that a person with developmental disabilities is a person first, who has value and deserves respect.
• apply elements of mutual respect to communication with people with developmental disabilities and their caregivers.
• identify responses that appropriately encourage and support the expression of feelings by people with developmental disabilities and their caregivers.
• describe skills nurses can use to support caregivers in facilitating the communication efforts of people with developmental disabilities.

This courseware was made possible in part by grant number R43 NR04738-03 from the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors.

Copyright© 2007 by HealthSoft, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

HealthSoft, Inc. is an approved provider of continuing nursing education by the New York State Nurses Association, an accredited approver by the American Nurses Credentialing Center's Commission on Accreditation.

It has been assigned code 7SENNF-PRV-09.

This course is updated annually. Expiration date: 5/1/11

The faculty and planners of this course have no vested interests to disclose.

This course has received no commercial support.