Transactional & Transformational Approach As a Nurse

Nurses assume numerous roles in providing care to clients. Most of the time, these roles are carried out simultaneously. They also have different approaches when interacting and offering care to patients. The transactional and transformational style is utilized to catering specific needs and performing health teachings. According to Imogene King, a proponent of Goal Attainment Theory, nurses are in a helping profession with the client. Both of them contribute to the planning and implementation of objectives where transactions take place and goals are met.

The Nurse as a Care Provider

• As a caregiver, nurses transact with their clients. They enter into a working relationship where one states what the other party needs to overcome in order rise from a current condition. Nurses conduct assessments and establish what the client needs. They provide care and assistance physically as well as psychologically. The required nursing actions may engage over-all care or supportive care in order to achieve the client's optimum level of health and wellness.

The Nurse as a Communicator

• Communication is fundamental in all nursing roles and approaches. The nurse-client communication is considered therapeutic. According to Barbra Kozier et al. in "Fundamentals of Nursing," it is a personal interaction between them which promotes an understanding and goal-directed relationship. It is the medium where the nurse identifies the client's problem and communicates it to the healthcare team. Through this affiliation, the nurse is a catalyst of change that can modify and improve a patient's health.

The Nurse as an Educator

• The nurse teaches the client about the disease condition, factors affecting it and ways to reduce or treat it among others. They provide health teachings to produce a behavior change. Included in these supplementary lessons are new knowledge and skills in health promotion and health maintenance. As a mentor, nurses could easily transact and influence transformation to patients. For instance, they could elicit conversion from non-compliance to compliance in taking prescribed medication to reduce harmful symptoms by demonstrating adverse effects of refusal.

The Nurse as Change Agent

• The initiator of change, the nurse, brings forth revision in the lifestyle of a patient. The role includes pinpointing the problem, assessing the resources of the client, exploring ways to solve it and guiding the client through these phases. This manner of transforming the patient towards health promotion is very effective at the same supportive and encouraging. It directs and reassures the patient to continue what has been taught. Hence, with the client's participation, nurses as change agents can successfully transform them.