The Contribution Of Hildegard Peplau To The Nurse And Individual Patient Relationship

The psychiatric patient should not be kept for long periods of time within care rather they shouldn’t be confined to the walls of a mental hospital their entire lives. Hildegard Peplau was a great advocate for nurse and patient relationships that were built on little predisposition and a clean state of mind when approaching a new patient. When it comes to the nurse and individual patient relationship Peplau defined four distinct phases.

To begin there is the orientation phase. This begins with the patient discovering that they need medical attention and the nurse assesses the patient and discusses the need and severity of help. Then the identification phase begins where the patient starts to identify with those who can help them. This is also where the nurse takes it upon themselves to explore the patient’s feelings and emotions in order to aid the patient not only with their illness but to solidify a positive environment and relationship. This ensures patient satisfaction as well as recovery. Peplau was animate on advocating for nurses to get further education within the psychiatric field in order for these patients to receive true therapeutic care as compared to the care they were receiving in mental hospitals during the mid -900s. She believed in a deeper connection within these patients due to key interpersonal communication skills and well as specialized interviewing techniques. She also believed in individual family and group therapy which she taught lessons on.

Peplau also defined psychodynamic nursing which is the ability to understand one’s own behavior and monitor those of a patient and figure out said difficulties. Also she believed in the strength of human relationships and their ability to help at all levels. In addition her theory stated that the nurse had many roles to play in patient care. the first being the stranger role which meant that the nurse receives the patent the exact same way the nurse would meet a stranger in real life outside the hospital. The stranger role allows no preconceptions as well as a clean slate in order to build trust within the nurse patient relationship. Secondly a resource person role. This simply means answering the patients inquires describing data to the patient and providing reasoning to nursing treatment. This also allows easy interpretation and less room for confusion with the medical plan to the patient. Then comes the teaching role in which the nurse gives instructions examples and even basic training to the patient in order for them to grasp a greater comprehension. The counseling role which allows the nurse to help patient comprehend recall what where why and how they are doing. This saves the patient from panic misunderstanding and insures cooperation. Next the surrogate role where a nurse explains how the patient and nurse relationship is similar to the past relationships they have had this allows for a deeper trust and connection.

Lastly the leadership role where the nurse makes sure that the patient is in charge of their progress giving them more control of their health and wellbeing. here in north America despite mental health being treated with higher standards and importance there are still many people who still suffer mentally without any hope of resolution. Despite being a first world country the third leading cause of death for those ages 10-24 is suicide in which 90% of the victims had an underlying mental illness. As someone who has struggled with my mental health the majority of my life i never thought that the care i received from councilors teachers and medical staff were adequate or helpful to drastically increase my overall well-being. Often times there’s that underlying message of just be happy and the idea that as a pretty privileged person i shouldn’t be so upset about my well-being.

Also mental illness still contains quite a bit of stigma and preconceptions. although it can result from situations such as grief or tragedy ptsd as well as psychological factors such as severe psychological trauma such as emotional physical or sexual abuse it can also arise from a disruption in your brain chemistry which is less obvious to distinguish. A doctor can look at an x-ray and point out a fracture or a broken bone but when it comes to the signals in your brain we can’t simply see the illness. This generates the stigma that mental illness is not existent since it’s sometimes completely unnoticeable. Rather people may think you are using at as a source of attention or be imagining your symptoms. As well the statistic revolving about certain classifications of people within the mental health community are a cause for concern. It is proven that men are twice as likely to die from suicide which shows that the overwhelming gender roles that men cannot be weak or seek help for their illness is quite obvious. Additionally psychology today author Rob Whitley 2017 states very high rates have been observed in veterans young American Indians and gay men. a common factor among these groups may be perceived or real rejection from mainstream society leading to strong feelings of alienation and isolation.

Whitley Peplau worked hard in order to fight the poor treatment of those suffering internally and categorized them as sick people who needed help rather than people who needed to be locked away from the rest of society. Without her work on psychiatric treatment many sick people would still live out their lives in mental institutions being treated like aliens that we cannot comprehend or understand.