Gibbs Reflective Cycle

Introduction It has always been stated to the nursing students about the importance of developing therapeutic and professional relations between clients and amongst the members of the interdisciplinary teams. Although I agree to the aforesaid statement, but I have always struggled to find the fine line that marks the professional boundaries. In this reflective writing, I will be using Gibbs reflective cycle (Gibbs, 1988) to describe my journey onto developing and using this essential nursing competency most effectively.

Description
To build the skill of therapeutic and professional relations, I undertook the mandatory units such as Professional Conduct and Communication (PCC) and Culture and Health. PCC taught me about managing interpersonal conflict by using effective listening and oral communication skills. This unit also stressed about the responsible use of social media and recommended to use social media guidelines set by Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia (NMBA) (NMBA, 2015). The Culture and Health unit gave me an insight about the skills required when communicating with people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.
They said that when nurses use this skills effectively the rate of patient satisfaction and their adherence to the treatment improves tremendously. I think this is the true sense of therapeutic relationship with patients. Effective communication is also important at work places to develop interpersonal relationship amongst peers. Buhari (2013) describes various factors that impedes the outcome of quality communication, such as significance of the profession, work-load, gender and environment under which communication takes place. In my opinion, these factors does have an impact on the outcome of the professional relations. I have experienced this greatly during my clinical placements, especially amongst the nurses and