This document is a process recording assignment for NURS 360, Psychiatric-Mental Health Nursing for Accelerated BSN students at California State University San Marcos. It’s a reflective exercise where students document a nurse-patient interaction, analyzing communication techniques and their therapeutic effectiveness.
This assignment is crucial for nursing students to develop self-awareness and critical thinking skills related to therapeutic communication. It’s typically used during clinical rotations to help students understand how their own biases and feelings impact interactions with patients experiencing mental health challenges. This specific assignment focuses on an interaction with a patient diagnosed with depression and bipolar disorder.
This document does *not* provide instruction on how to conduct therapeutic communication, nor does it offer a comprehensive guide to mental health diagnoses. It’s a single student’s analysis of one interaction, and shouldn’t be used as a substitute for course readings or clinical supervision.
This assignment provides a detailed account of a nurse-patient interaction, including: the setting and context, the student nurse’s initial feelings, a breakdown of verbal and non-verbal communication (both nurse and patient), an evaluation of communication techniques as therapeutic or non-therapeutic, and proposed alternative approaches. It also includes a reflection on personal biases and their influence on the interaction. This preview *does not* include the full assignment grading rubric or the complete course syllabus.