Communication Themes of Patient Engagement for Multi-speciality Hospitals: Nurses’ Perspective

Abstract

Introduction: Patient engagement is engaging patients in their own medical care to heal them faster and take their valuable inputs to improve the health of population. Nurses contribute significantly in treatment, interact and spend most of their time with inpatients. Therefore, exploring the perspectives of nurses on patient engagement-communication is of vital importance. Objective: This article focuses on exploring the communication themes of patient engagement from the perspective of nurses in a multi-speciality hospital in Delhi. Methodology: The exploratory qualitative case study was carried out with semi-structured interviews of 12 nurses, observation at receptions of ICUs and emergency department and analysis of documents from the hospital’s official website. Grounded theory—three-level coding—was performed to identify the themes of patient engagement-communication. Results: A total of nine themes have been identified: ‘attendant’s role’, ‘communicating with patients of different categories’, ‘doctor’s support to nurses’, ‘nurse action’, ‘nurse behaviour’, ‘nurse challenges’, ‘patient actions’, ‘patient emotions’ and ‘wider role of nurses’. Conclusion: Nurses play a critical role in engaging patients through communication. They should change their approach of communication with different types of patients, understand, respect and give due weightage to patient’s emotions and actions and, play a wider role of teacher and guardian than just being the nurse.