A nurse usually avoids physical contact with patients, but when one is diagnosed with a terminal disease, the nurse wishes to hug the patient

Question

This contradiction initially confuses the nurse, but a co-worker helps the nurse differentiate the two behavioral responses based on
a. feelings of closeness to this patient.
b. the context in which each occurred.
c. therapeutic communication techniques.
d. values that guided each situation.

Answer 1

B
Context is the biggest influence on the interpretation of communication, and it means more than the place and time in which communication occurred. The nuances and shared meanings that occur in each situation give rise to individually constructed meanings. In the setting of a new terminal diagnosis, the nurse was aware of contextually driven communication needs and responded by wanting to hug the patient.
Nurses do become closer to some patients than to others, but this is a very narrow explanation.
Touch is part of therapeutic communication, but this is too narrow an explanation.
Values are part of all communication encounters, but this is too narrow to explain the appropriateness of the different responses.