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Coaching Skills for Nurses

Featured Author:

Claire Westwood

“Claire Westwood is a trained nurse and inspirational life coach. She has been a nurse since 1985 and has worked in a variety of areas in adult and paediatric care.

She is now a life coach and the founder of “happynurses” with a mission to create a million happy nurses. Claire works with individual nurses who feel overwhelmed and ‘stuck’ in life, enabling them to create fulfilling, balanced lives for themselves. She also enables employers who have high levels of absence or high staff turnover to raise their staff morale and reduce sickness and stress amongst their teams.

Take a look at Claire’s e-book The Happynurses Guide to Being Happier at Work: 6 Top Tips. It was recently given a four star (out of five) rating by The Nursing Standard.

For free happiness tips go to www.happynurses.co.uk and leave your email address in the box!

Claire can be contacted on Claire@happynurses.co.uk 07794 990 258

More articles from this author:

• How to Create a Balanced Life while Nursing
• happynurses Problem Page. Challenge No. 1 – Lack of Confidence
• happynurses Problem Page

By Claire Westwood RGN, RSCN, BA Health Studies, Dip Life Coaching, founder of www.happynurses.co.uk

Coaching is an individualised, action-based way to help clients set goals for their future. A coach will work with a client for a number of weeks or months, and will explore the client’s beliefs, values and current reality. The coach then helps them to move forward in life by teaching them to set specific goals, and holding them accountable to take action. The sessions can be held over the phone, or face to face.

As a coach I enable my clients to discover their own answers through the use of questions. I explore their values, their beliefs about themselves and where they feel they are now in relation to where they would like to be. We then establish a written action plan, built around small, manageable actions, which helps them to achieve their goals. They are the ones who decide what they are going to do, not me.

This article will explore some of the communication skills taught as part of my Life Coaching Diploma, and how they can be applied to nursing. These skills are allied to Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and can be used in any communication between individuals. They can deepen relationships between client and nurse, lead to greater understanding between health professionals and also improve intimate relationships.

Neuro Linguistic Programming – NLP

Rapport

Creating rapport is extremely important in any relationship. Rapport is the feeling of warmth and trust between two people, allowing effective communication to take place. Some people find this easier to do naturally than others, but there are ways to establish rapport easily with almost anyone.

It is generally easier to create a feeling of connection with ‘people who are like us’. This makes it easier to relate to individuals of the same gender, physical appearance or values. This is a natural and instinctive type of connection, and can be observed between two people. They may be smiling at each other, or ‘mirroring’ each other’s movements and behaviour. This happens when two people are connected in their communication – they will sometimes be standing in the same way, with postures that are the exact opposite of each other. You may notice them moving their hands or changing position at the same time without noticing it themselves. Watch couples when they are out, or old friends or colleagues at work and look for positions that show ‘mirroring’.

This can be used by you to make clients or patients feel more relaxed and establish a connection. When you are sitting opposite a patient or client you can observe how they are sitting and alter your posture slightly to ‘mirror’ them. Your fear may be that ‘they will notice what I am doing’. This may be the case, but as this all happens subconsciously they should respond positively to your positioning without knowing why. If you generally find it easy to establish rapport with your patients, you may notice that you do this automatically. Leaning slightly forward, establishing eye contact and smiling, if appropriate, are simple ways to increase the connection with them.

Using a similar voice pattern, tone and pitch can also create a link with your client or colleague. A patient that is angry or stressed can be made to relax slightly if you match their pace and tone initially, then slow the pace and reduce the volume of your voice so that when they answer they may echo your tone and volume. Their responses are automatic and instinctive.

Questioning

You can use great questions to discover what the patient or client wants for themselves – allow your client/ patient to state their own aims and goals. Theirs may be different to yours, but they are more likely to follow their own plan than one you give them. What do they want, and when? Be realistic, but allow for a degree of challenge.

What actions have they tried before? What worked, and what didn’t? What stopped them? Do others around them help or hinder their progress?

The art of asking better questions is one of the most valuable skills I have learnt as a coach. Examples of incisive and powerful questions:
How do you feel about….?
What might stop you?
How could I help you….?
What else could you do….?
What would you do if you knew you would succeed?
How would you love to feel when you woke up in the morning?