Effective Nursing Counseling Skills and Principles

1. Counseling

2. Should a nurse counsel • YES • Counseling is about talking to people and more about listening • Is does not require turning into counselors • It about how useful is counseling skills in all aspects of work • Counseling can enhance communication and caring between HCP and patient, HCP and HCP • Counseling make us more human and more caring and more able to care

3. Common factors • Listening • Encouraging • enabling • Expression of feeling • Exploring • Easing of tension • Following the client’s lead • Resolution of problems

4. General principles • Predictability of human behaviors • Flexibility of human behaviors • Human behaviors is individual and social. • Readiness for counseling is inherited for all. • Counseling is a psychological need • Counseling is a life long process

5. Goals of counseling • Self actualization • Accommodation and adaptation • Enhancing wellness • Enhancing self independence • Enhancing decision making

6. Characteristics of good counselor • Having good identity • Respect and appreciate themselves • Open to change • Making choices that makes their lives • Feel a live and choices are goal oriented • Sense of humor • Making mistakes and willing to admit them • Live in present • Appreciate the influence of culture • Sencere interest in welfare of others • Able to maintain healthy boundaries

7. Qualities of counselors • Personal warmth • Genuineness • Empathy • Unconditional positive regard= accepting = prizing • Intuition • Caring : knowledge, alternating rhythm, hope, patients, honesty, trust, humility, and courage

8. Sense of humor • Sense of tragic self awareness: beliefs, values, prejudices, likes and dislikes, how others see you, your view of yourself, and your religious beliefs or your lacks of them, political beliefs, sexual preferences, fears and anxieties, knowledge , skills, strengths, and weaknesses, deficits. .

9. Requirements for effective counseling • Personal qualities: e.g, warmth, sense of humor…. • Specific counseling: e.g. questioning, reflecting, checking… • Life experience: home life, work, relationships,… • Knowledge base: psychology, sociology…. • Understanding of self and others: self-awareness, cultural and social awareness.

10. Issues is counseling • Dealing with own anxiety • Being and disclosing own self • Avoiding perfectionism • Being honest about limitation • Understanding silence • Dealing with demands with clients • Dealing with clients who lacks commitment

11. Tolerating ambiguity • Avoiding losing themselves in clients • Developing sense of humor • Sharing responsibility with clients • Declining in giving advices • Defining your role as counselor • Applying techniques appropriately • Developing own counseling style

12. Ethical issues in counseling • Putting clients’ needs before counselor’s needs • Making ethical decisions: steps in making ethical decision: • Identify the problem • Identify the potential issue • Look at the relevant ethics codes • Consider the applicable laws and regulations • Seek consultation from more than one source • Brainstorm various possible courses of action • Enumerate consequences of various decisions • Decide on what apears the best possible course of action

13. The right of inform consent • Confidentiality • Cultural differences • Dual and multiple role practice