In this podcast, I explore nurses’ communication in serious situations and illness as a radical act of care. Radical, because language is powerful: we know it can make a big difference for patients and their families who are coping with severe health issues. Even one word or nonverbal gesture can change a life, be carried forever in a memory about a life and/or death.
Nurses must communicate with diverse patients and families in serious health situations at all hours of the day and night, in all kinds of challenging situations and wherever care is needed- in hospital and community settings. It is often unwitnessed by other health professionals, making it invisible. This aspect of a nurse’s role is often taken-for-granted, especially when it is embedded in technical care and tasks. In this podcast we expose nurse talk for what it is and can be- a complex, multi-dimensional artful skill practiced in stress-filled conditions. We debunk common ideas that nurse talk is simply “being nice.”
The intent of the podcast is to make visible, explore, learn from and value the often misunderstood, skilled and artful relational communication role of nurses across diverse patient and practice contexts.
I talk with nurses and others about nurses’ expertise, experience, courage, joys and frustrations in having conversations that involve serious situations and illness, loss, life-altering and unwanted change, living in uncertainty, declining health and end-of-life.
The result is a tapestry of conversations that reveal the important and necessary work that humans need from nurses to live and die well.
