Chapter 7: Caring in Nursing Potter Review

Question 1

A nurse hears a colleague tell a nursing student that she never touches a patient unless she is performing a procedure or doing an assessment. The nurse tells the nursing student that from a caring perspective:

1. She does not touch the pt. either
2. Touch is a type of verbal communication
3. There is never a problem with using touch
4. Touch forms a connection between nurse and patient

Answer 1

Answer: 4.
Touch is relational and leads to a connection between nurse and patient. It involves contact and noncontact touch. Contact touch involves obvious skin-to-skin contact, whereas noncontact touch refers to eye contact.

Question 2

Of the five caring processes described by Swanson, which describes “knowing the patient”

1. Anticipating the patients cultural preferences
2. Determining the patients physician preference
3. Establishing an understanding of a specific patient
4. Gathering task-oriented information during assessment

Answer 2

Answer: 3.
Knowing the context of a patient’s illness helps you choose and individualize interventions that will actually help him or her. Strive to understand an event as it has meaning in the life of the other. Knowing the patient is essential when providing patient-centered care. Two elements that facilitate knowing are continuity of care and clinical expertise.

Question 3

A Muslim woman enters the clinic to have a woman’s health examination for the first time. Which nursing behavior applies Swanson’s caring process of “knowing the patient”?

1. Sharing feelings about the importance of having regular woman’s health examination
2. Gaining an understanding of what a woman’s health examination means to the patient
3. Recognizing that the patient is modest; obtaining gender-congruent caregiver
4. Explaining the risk factors of cervical cancer

Answer 3

Answer: 2.
You should strive to understand an event as it has meaning in the life of the other. Knowing the patient is essential when providing patient-centered care.

Question 4

Helping a new mother through the birthing experience demonstrates which of Swanson’s five caring processes?

1. Knowing
2. Enabling
3. Doing for
4. Being with

Answer 4

Answer: 2.
The caring behavior of enabling facilitates the other’s passage through life transitions (e.g., birth, death) and unfamiliar events. When a nurse practices enabling, the patient and nurse work together to identify alternatives and resources.

Question 5

A patient is fearful of upcoming surgery and a possible cancer diagnosis. He discusses his love for the bible with his nurse, who recommends a favorite Bible verse. Another nurse tells the patients nurse that there is no place in nursing for spiritual caring. The patient’s nurse replies:

1. “Spiritual care should be left to a professional”
2. “You are correct, religion is a personal decision”
3. “Nurses should not force their religious beliefs on patients”
4. “Spiritual, mind, and body connections can affect health”

Answer 5

Answer: 4.
Spirituality offers a sense of connectedness, intrapersonally (connected with oneself), interpersonally (connected with others and the environment), and transpersonally (connected with the unseen, God, or a higher power). In a caring relationship the patient and nurse come to know one another so both move toward a healing relationship.

Question 6

Which of the following is a strategy for creating work enviornments that enable nurses to demonstrate more caring behaviors?

1. Increasing the working hours of the staff
2. Increasing salary benefits of the staff
3. Creating a setting that allows flexibility and autonomy for staff
4. Encouraging icreased input concerning nursing fucntions from physicians

Answer 6

Answer: 3.
These factors all affect nursing satisfaction. When nurses’ job satisfaction is high, they have a greater connectedness with their patients and believe that caring practices are part of the nursing culture.

Question 7

When a nurse helps a patient find the meaning of cancer by supporting beliefs about life, this is an example of:

1. Instilling hope and faith
2. Forming human-altrusitic value system
3. Cultural caring
4. Being with

Answer 7

Answer: 1.
Instilling hope and faith helps to increase an individual’s capacity to get through an event or transition and face the future with meaning.

Question 8

An example of a nurse caring behavior that families of acutely ill patients percieve as important to patients’ well-being is:

1. Making health care decisions for patients
2. Having family members provide a patients total personal hygiene
3. Injecting the nurses perceptions about the level of care provided
4. Asking permission before performing a procedure on a patient

Answer 8

Answer: 4.
Caring for the family takes into consideration the context of the patient’s illness and the stress it imposes on all members.

Question 9

Listening is not only “taking in” what a patient says; it also includes:

1. Incorporating the views of the physician
2. Correcting any errors in the patients understanding
3. Injecting the nurses personal views and statements
4. Interpreting and understanding what the patient means.

Answer 9

Answer: 4.
Listening is powerful. It conveys the nurse’s full attention and interest. A true caring presence involves listening. Listen to what is important to another person and the meaning of a situation to that person.

Question 10

Listening is not only “taking in” what the patient says; it also includes:

1. Incorporating the views of the physician
2. Correcting any errors in the patients understanding
3. Injecting the nurses personal views and statements
4. Interpreting and understanding what the patient means

Answer 10

Answer: 4.
Listening is powerful. It conveys the nurse’s full attention and interest. A true caring presence involves listening. Listen to what is important to another person and the meaning of a situation to that person.

Question 11

A nurse is caring for an older adult who needs to enter an assisted-living facility following discharge from the hospital. Which of the following is an example of listening that displays caring?

1. The nurse encourages the pt. to talk about his concerns while reviewing the computer screen in the room
2. The nurse sits at the patients bedside, listens as he relays his fear of never seeing his home again, and then asks if he wants anything to eat
3. The nurse listens to the patients story while sitting on the side of the bed and then summarizes the story
4. The nurse listens to the patient talk about his fears of not returning home and then tells him to think positively

Answer 11

Answer: 3.
Attentive listening lets the nurse hear the patient’s story and then correctly summarize it. It does not occur when the nurse is distracted by equipment or other personnel. The importance of listening is not to distract the patient or solve the problem, but rather to hear what the patient has to say and understand what the situation means to him.

Question 12

Presence involves a person-to-person encounter that:

1. Enables patients to care for self
2. Provides personal care to a patient
3. Conveys a closeness and sense of caring
4. Describes being in close contact with a patient

Answer 12

Answer: 3.
Providing presence is a person-to-person encounter conveying closeness and a sense of caring. It involves “being there” and “being with.” “Being there” is not only a physical presence but also includes communication and understanding. Presence is an interpersonal process that is characterized by sensitivity, holism, intimacy, vulnerability, and adaptation to unique circumstances.

Question 13

A nurse enters a patients room, arranges the supplies for a Foley catheter insertion, and explains the procedure to the patient. She tells the patient what to expect; just before inserting the catheter, she tells the patient to relax and that, once the catheter is in place, she will not feel the bladder pressure. The nurse then proceeds to skillfully insert the Foley catheter. This is an example of what kind of touch?

1. Caring touch
2. Protective touch
3. Task-oriented touch
4. Interpersonal touch

Answer 13

Answer: 3.
Nurses use task-orientated touch when performing a task or procedure. An expert nurse learns that any procedure is more effective when administered carefully and in consideration of any patient concern.

Question 14

A hospice nurse sits at the bedside of a male patient in the final stages of cancer. He and his parents made the decision that he would move home and they would help him in the final stages of his disease. The family participates in his care, but lately the nurse has increased the amount of time she spends with the family. Whenever she enters the room or approaches the patient to give care, she touches his shoulder and tells him that she is present. This is an example of what type of touch?

1. Caring touch
2. Protective touch
3. Task-oriented touch
4. Interpersonal touch

Answer 14

Answer: 1.
Caring touch is a form of nonverbal communication. You express this in the way you hold a patient’s hand, give a back massage, gently position a patient, or participate in a conversation. When using a caring touch, you connect with the patient physically and emotionally.

Question 15

Swansons Theory of Caring

Answer 15

Knowing
Being With
Doing for
Enabling
Maintaining belief