Nursing, as a professional that is within healthcare, consists of many daily activities that a clinical person needs to perform regularly. The events done by nurses mostly focus on the care of people and families so that to help keep them in functional health status. As a nurse practitioner, I perform duties like assessing the needs of the patients, ordering and interpreting the result that is from diagnosis and performs laboratory tests on patients. As a part-time job, in my line of work, I usually interact, and advice obesity people, and advice them on how to eat healthily, and do exercises daily. However, I noticed that there was a need to improve the interaction with the patients during the daily clinical process.

I realized that when interacting with the patients, I did not give them enough time to talk about their health issues. Moreover, I was judgmental to the patients and did not address their needs well. Furthermore, I would occasionally show disrespect to the extent of blaming them of their overweight. I was also insensitive to their cultural beliefs about weight and their social norms and practices.  In my improvement process, I decided to do away with some of the things that I used to do before deciding to change my method. Firstly, since the central part that allocated as my part-time in the nursing practice was advising obese people, I decided to add more time to it, so that patients can raise their concerns and for advice. Also, I needed to improve general communication with patients, such that, if my patient has any problem, for example, a sore throat, I would not be too judgmental and conclude that it is caused by overweight. I would let the patients talk about their issues, which may affect their physical and emotional health. Additionally, when raising the concern of obesity, I would do it in a respectful and a non-judgmental way, so that my patients may feel respected and be more open. I decided that before talking about obesity issues with my patients, I will discuss with them, and ask them if they know the risks that are associated with overweight, and after that, ask them if they want to talk about their obesity issue.

Flow Chart 1: Daily Interactions with Obese People before Change

Meeting with the patients

Talking with them about the effects of overweight

Patients speak more about themselves.

Weight measurement

Advising the patients on what they can do to improve their health

Assessment plan for the patients, to be checked every three weeks

Flow Chart 2: Daily Interactions with Patients after Change

Meeting with the patients

Talking with them about the effects of overweight in a friendly, respectful and nonjudgmental way

An interactive session where patients speak more about themselves, their culture, beliefs, problems and their eating habits

Weight measurement and other small tests like calculation of BMI

Advising the patients on what they can do to improve their health

Assessment plan for the patients, to be checked every three weeks

After making the necessary changes in the way I communicated with my patients, I noticed that many of my patients became more open to me about their weight and how they would like to change their eating habits. Additionally, more patients agreed to enroll in the exercise plan that I had implemented earlier and promised better results. In the complete assessment, I realized that good communication was an essential tool when handling patients.