Care Expectations Series: The Therapeutic Nurse-Client Relationship While Doing Laundry

This series is focused on the practice standards of nursing staff. Particularly, we will be focusing on the College of Nurses of Ontario practice standards. Download a copy to review https://www.cno.org/globalassets/docs/prac/41033_therapeutic.pdf (here). And today's episode, we'll be diving into the core standard of therapeutic nurse client relationship, which is the document that covers the heavy hitting foundational expectations that your nursing staff are already held to.
These standards are not unique to any particular area of nursing
The standards cover anyone who is a registered nurse - that includes registered practical nurses as well as registered nurses, advanced practice nurses, nurse practitioners, etc.
As I mentioned, this series will cover the practice standards and other guiding documents that are behind nursing practice, particularly in Ontario
With the very specific geographical context, keep in mind all of these documents and these governing bodies exist for your area
Nursing standards are expectations that contribute to public protection
They inform nurses of their accountabilities and the public of what to expect of nurses standards apply to all nurses regardless of their role, job description or area of practice
At the core of nursing is the therapeutic nurse client relationship - the nurse establishes and maintains this key relationship by using nursing knowledge and skills, as well as applying caring attitudes and behaviors
The nurse client relationship contains five core elements: trust, respect, professional intimacy, empathy, and power
Trust is critical, because as the client or the patient, regardless of the setting, but particularly when giving birth, you are extremely vulnerable
That is why trust tops the list, and it is important that your care providers establish this piece above all else
Respect is the recognition of the inherent dignity, worth and uniqueness of individuals
Regardless of any reason that exists that another person may judge them
So this in particular calls on nurses to address their own internal biases around any number of ways that they could be discriminating against clients, without even knowing it, as well as actively participating in damaging disrespectful actions
Professional intimacy is a concept that you may not have heard of before
You can understand and appreciate the physical closeness that nursing staff have when it comes to birth
Professional intimacy also includes the psychological aspects, spiritual and the social pieces that are part of the plan of care
Having access to such intimate information, the secrets and the darkness that people carry, comes with great responsibility
Empathy is the expression of understanding that goes a long way to validate a patient's experience
Birth is a triumphant experience - if the people around you are not treating it as such, it's going to be very difficult for you to engage with it as a triumphant experience
Nurses are the people who keep others safe - with that power comes the ability to harm them too
We need to recognize from the get go that this relationship is always one of unequal power, and that power imbalance has so many implications
We don't even collect race specific data in Canada, let alone have discussions over how we treat black indigenous people of color in this country
We can look at the data in the states and know that there are alarming discrepancies between the death rate of white and black birthing people
This is not new information - we need to start talking about it because there are rules in place to prevent this from happening, and no one's doing anything about it
This is what the care expectation series is highlighting that there are ways for you to enforce and reinforce your needs being met, and then hold people accountable for not reading that
There's no more second guessing whether or not the way you were treated was okay or not
We have ways to figure that out now...