Soft Skills for Nurses

“Nursing is an art: and if it is to be made an art, it requires an exclusive devotion as hard a preparation, as any painter's or
sculptor's work; for what is the having to do with dead canvas or dead marble, compared with having to do with the living
body, the temple of God's spirit? It is one of the Fine Arts: I had almost said, the finest of Fine Arts.”
―Florence Nightingale

For Healthcare Professionals Only

 Table of Contents
1) Soft Skills Pre-Quiz
2) Definition of Soft Skills
3) Hard skills vs. Soft Skills
4) A Comparison Between Old and New Practices
5) Essential Soft Skills Needed by the Nurse
6) Communication Skill
7) Empathy Skill
8) Teamwork Skill
9) Decision Making/ Active Listening Skill
10) Multitasking Skill
11) Goals of Nursing
12) Various Roles Executed by Nurse
13) Learning Tools
14) Synopsis
 Soft Skills- Pre-Quiz
Are you able to interact with other person comfortably?

Are you aware of your body language while talking to patients?

Are you able to discuss sensitive or personal issues?

Are you able to voice your disagreement with someone in a position of authority?

Are you confident while facing challenging situations?

Do you value nursing profession and try to set professional standards?

Are you open to new learning opportunities including classroom, clinical and lab experiences?
 Definition− Soft Skills
Soft Skills are defined as personality traits, attitude and behaviour of an individual that
0000 solving techniques.
pertains to effective communication and problem

 Soft skills are not taught formally like technical education

 Soft skills employed in a medical facility leads to productive and happy staff and satisfied
patients

 It helps to achieve accreditations standard. For e.g.: Quality Management procedures,

Hospital Standing Orders, etc.

 Soft skills comprises major part of personality needed for finding a suitable job, its
maintenance and promotion
 Hard Skills v/s Soft Skills

Hard Skills Soft Skills

• Skills that one need to perform a
• Skills referring to a person’s various
particular job
behaviours personality traits
• These skills are developed through
• These skills are self-taught and self-
training and education
developed
• Measureable Skills
• Immeasurable skills
• Hard Skills mainly depend on your role
• Soft skills are applicable across all jobs
in your respective industry
and titles
• Primarily solitary
• Predominantly social
Old Practices Compared with New Approaches
Old method New method
Child care after birth Child care starts at conception
Disease centered care Child centered care
Special care during last trimester Early detection tests and counselling to prevent any
chromosomal defects in unborn child
Care of pregnant women Focus on maternal health and planned pregnancies
Parents are not allowed to be with sick child Ensuring parents are always present near the child and
participate in the care
Only treatment oriented Warmth and love oriented
Curative and preventive care at the hospital facility Extending the health promotion environment beyond
only hospital facility
Childcare illness oriented Childcare is Health oriented
No attention on child neglect and abuse Protect and safeguard the interest and rights of
children
 What is the Need for Soft Skills?
• Basic idea to introduce soft skills training is to integrate technical knowledge with skills
to improve interaction with patients

• For better handling of patients, nurses should be well equipped in order to provide
better services to the patients

• Soft skills help nurses to become sharper, smarter and effective in their approach

• WHO supports to increase the skilled birth attendants in order to improve intrapartum
care

• The gap between nurses and patients can be bridged with effective communication
Essential Soft Skills for Nurse

Communication Empathy

Decision making/
Teamwork
Active Listening

Multitasking
 1. Communication Skill
Information:
Confirmation:
Safeguard the
Dispatch the right
information to
information to
close family
right people
members

Coordination:
Coordinate with Timeliness: A
medical team and message delivered
family to keep the too early or too
information late may add to
precise and confusion
accurate

Effective Communication
 Case Study: Communication Skill
Sushma joins her duty in hospital facility and is assigned to
work in labour room. The patient and the family members are
facing difficulty and ask Sushma to advocate C-section to
physician. She continues monitoring the vitals of the patient
and recording them. Despite repeated requests, Sushma
ignores the patient and does not communicate with the patient
and the family.

What should Sushma do in this

scenario to calm the patient?
 2. Empathy
The nurse should recognize the
The nurse should empathize
patient as a human being like you ,
with patients to understand the
who , perhaps is in pain and needs
disease clearly
your attention and care

World English World Health Organization

Dictionary defines consider this as the most
empathy as ability to important soft skill for
put oneself in someone communication with
else’s shoes patients
 Case Study: Empathy
A woman is visiting the healthcare facility for the first prenatal
visit. She seeks advice to determine her health status and build
positive behaviour patterns of health promotion during
pregnancy. The nurse on duty is responsible for outpatients and
takes the patient for examination and assess the anatomical
structures of patient’s body.

How to appropriately intervene

to provide nursing care?
 Case Study: Empathy
Sophie is an under graduate nursing student who is going to
administer her first vaccination injection to a new-born under
her senior’s observation. Parents of the new born are restless as
this is their first time to witness this. While concentrating on her
job, Sophie is unaware of the parent’s feelings.

What should Sophie do to

comfort her client?
 3. Teamwork
Manages the
nursing care of Empower patients
patients and to actively get
supervises and involved with the
evaluates their treatment process
performance

Important part of A nurse specializing

medical team in midwifery;
comprising doctors, provides prenatal
pharmacists , and postnatal care
physical therapists and deliver babies
successfully
 Case Study: Teamwork
The pediatrician is busy doing a surgery while the other infants
are waiting for the doctor. Meera is taking care of nursery and
has had a busy day so far. Upon entering the ward, she come’s
across a crowd gathering outside the doctor’s chamber. Meera
finds out that the nurse on duty is busy with the surgery.

What should be the plan of

action at this situation?
 4. Decision Making
Nurses use their technical Nurses have to be balanced
skills while administering in taking decisions to
medications patients unexpected needs

Nurses identify medical

Nurses have to take emergency, and
quick and timely immediately contact the
decision about available physician for
patients' care planning treatment
protocol
 Case Study: Decision Making
Joseph is placed in operation theatre to take care of preparations
before the surgery. He routinely checks the availability of drugs
to be administered during the surgery. Upon checking the list ,
he comes across missing drug required in the surgery. Joseph
calls in the pharmacy to procure the drug, however, the brand he
is asking is not available. The pharmacist informs him about
another brand of same drug.

What should Joseph do in order

to arrange for smooth surgery?
 5. Multitasking
Employability Quotient
• Employers look for people who have skills in managing multiple tasks
• Leadership skills help an individual to lead a group of people with mixed personalities with
common goal

Time Management
• Prioritizing the work and delegating it when needed
• Taking responsibilities of many patients with complex needs
• Punctuality in meeting deadlines and timelines

Administrator
• It is reported, that nurses spend around 34% of their time multitasking
• Perform duties at various level of management, administering of resources and personnel
 Case Study: Multitasking
A child is born with congenital heart disease and is immediately
taken for surgery in cardiology department operation theatre. As
the zone is highly sensitive, no one is allowed except specialized
medical team. The infant is prescribed mother’s milk, however,
mother is not allowed in the ICU. The nurses at the nurse station
are responsible for collecting the milk and feeding the child.

What are the methods a nurse

should employ in order to bring
the child closer to the mother?
 6. Interpersonal Skills
Control emotions
Instill confidence
while discussing
among the
health issues
patients
with patients

Develop a
Be loving and
professional
warm and
relationship with
respect the
patients and
spatial
their families
boundaries
 Case Study: Interpersonal Skills
Priya, an under-graduate nursing student , enters her patient’s
room with her physician, to attend a mentally disabled 30-week
pregnant patient.
The patient missed several important tests that need to be
completed in 2nd trimester. Also the patient is suffering from UTI
as she didn’t completed her course of antibiotic from the last
infection. The patient is Rh-negative.

What should Priya do in setting

up help for the patient?
 Goals of Nursing
Care to patients

Guide family and

caregiver in patient cared

Promote health and

wellness of patient

Prevent disease and

alleviate suffering

“Nurses dispense comfort, compassion, and

caring without even a prescription”-Val Saintsbury
Various Roles Executed by a Nurse

Primary Coordinato
Care Giver r

Health
Educator

Counselor Researcher
Learning Tools for Teaching Soft Skills of Nursing
Live examples of situations in hospital rooms and labs

Conduct 1-2 minutes skits to present different scenarios

Briefing on soft skills topic and exchanging personal experiences

Discussions can be conducted on topics like body language, right and wrong approaches and clinical
examples
Maintaining junior –senior discussion board online to exchange information

Soft skills are difficult skills to practice realistically, so a live example can be role played to reduce
Theory-practice gap
 Enhancing Performance Through Soft Skills
‘Soft Skills’ determine a person’s success

A person who can speak well, listen well, understand other points of view, and can work
together in a team is always desired and appreciated.
Example: A high performer who is weak in soft skills can never succeed in her career.
Employees having strong set of soft skills not only produce better results at work , they
also help create an enjoyable work environment
 Synopsis

• Whilst both sets of skills (Hard and soft skills) are very different, both are equally important
• During this presentation we learnt about the importance of soft skills
• Certain Skills like hard skills can be taught, however, soft skills are self-developed
• Soft skills helps in building meaningful work relationships with patients as well as your seniors

According Charles H. Green

Trust = Credibility + Reliability+ Intimacy/Self Orientation

• Technical skills make you credible in your profession, core competencies make you a reliable performer
• Intimacy develops when a person build rapport with their colleagues and customers, and be transparent
while performing her duties