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COMMUNICATION FOR NURSES

COMMUNICATION FOR NURSES

Communication for Nurses

Sydni Beasley
University of Kentucky
CIS 110-066

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Abstract
Tilda Shalof is a well known book writer and nurse. She goes to colleges and gives public
speeches on her experience as a nurse. Nursing has always been a huge part of her life. She has
taken her communication skills and applied them to nursing and writing her book. She is a
influential speaker and writer that helps everyone realize what nursing really is.

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Tilda Shalof is a well known author and nurse. She has written several books about
nursing that explains her experiences with the profession. "Tilda Shalof RN, BScN, CNCC (C)
has been a staff nurse in the Medical-Surgical Intensive Care Unit at Toronto General Hospital of
the University Health Network, for the past twenty-four years" ( Shalof ). She has been a
dedicated nurse for many years and wrote her books to get the message across of what it is all
about. This is to give people considering nursing a inside of what actually happens that patients
and visitors dont see. She uses her communication skills throughout her everyday life. She has
written books that express what her everyday life consist of and so much more about the nursing
profession. Nursing is a career that requires many communication skills in which she has and the
many more she has from public speaking and book writing.
Reading Tilda Shalof's book "The Making of a Nurse", I realized why nursing is exactly
what I wish to pursue. I joined the nursing major because I knew I wanted to be in healthcare but
didn't know what would be best. Nursing seemed to be the most beneficial career for that. But I
was always unaware of exactly what it consisted of until I read her book. Reading the words in
the book and picturing exactly what is said help me in a way live it with her. Her life was just an
average life. Awful things happened to her, but that is just like everyone else. It wasn't perfect,
but it was normal. From her life I understand more why she became and continued nursing. Her
will and motivation throughout the book reminded me why I am trying for the nursing program.
All the pre nursing students that are in a Nursing 101 class had to read her book. Lucky
for everyone, we had the opportunity to listen to her speak. Her speech started with her

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explaining why she wrote all her books. Writing the book was her way of venting. She explained
to us, having a husband who didnt understand or get the thrill of the moments she went through
was hard. She couldnt just tell him; therefore, instead of telling him she began to write her
books (Shalof, 2015 ). Listening to her speech, I was so engaged and interested. I had to take a
way my distractions and focus directly on her to completely live through these moments with her.
I had to learn to "listen at multiple levels", which meant just listening to her tone and knowing
how serious her topics were( Bodary, 2014 ). Majority of her topics were serious because it dealt
with patients and the hard illnesses they were going through.
Tilda Shalof has written more than The Making of a Nurse, she has written several books.
They all discuss different aspects of her life and what she has been through. Going through
becoming a nurse and actually being a nurse had many hardships and also glorious moments.
Lucky for her that is what makes for a great book. So she put her life into words and produced
amazing works. What nurse has time to be a nurse and write books? Well she made time for it
and has helped many people with her books. Her book helped me realize why I should continue
pursuing nursing so I'm sure it did that and more for other people as well. She wrote one other
book called A Nurse's Story.
In A Nurse's Story she discusses more recent stories. "She touches on the difficulties
associated with the restructuring of the 1990's, which led to cutbacks and nurse layoffs, and the
2003 SARS crisis, which threatened and burdened nurses far more than any other class of health
care workers" ( Thomas ,2007 ). So not only does she discuss her side of everything she talks
about what's going on in nursing nationwide. Nursing to her is her world, yes she has family that

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she holds very near and dear to her heart, but she loves nursing and what is going on with it as it
grows. Her will throughout both of her books is what helps me realize this is the major and
career for me.
Tilda Shalof has gone through so much and this has made her the great communicator she
is today. Her communications skills she uses through out her speech, like the one we had the
opportunity to see, shows how great she is as a communicator. Although she has inspired me as a
nurse, she has also inspired me through her communication skills. "Nonverbal communication is
the primary conveyer of emotions" ( Bodary, 2014). She uses her nonverbal communication to
show her emotion towards a certain scenario during her speech. Her speech had times that were
really serious and she used her nonverbal to communicate her tone for that scenario. She talked
about a mistake that another nurse made that could have killed the patient. When she discussed it
she applied verbal and nonverbal communication to imply how serious that scenario was and
how serious nursing is in general.
Her communication skills were outstanding, listening to her speak and how she spoke.
She is such a good communicator even through her books. Her books showed her intelligence
toward what her career was but also showed her skills as a communicator through her writings.
Being able to write and have good communication skills while writing is essential. When ever a
piece of writing has good communication skills, it clearly gets across its meaning and audience
(Skills you Need ). These skills take good writing, but also punctuation, grammar, and spelling
(Skills you Need). This exert from The Making of a Nurse shows how her diction and her

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explaining throughout the exert showed her understanding that not everyone that is reading this
is a nurse. So she went into detail to communicate how she felt from her success.
"By the end of the day his blood pressure had stabilized, his fever was down, and he was
beginning to wake up. Even the reddened area on his toes was beginning to recede. I
stood there taking it all in, feeling triumphant, even heroic, claiming a lot of the credit.
Frances came over to see how I was doing and I told her I thought we could probably
start weaning down the settings on the ventilator and how I planned to get my patient up
in the chair the next day" ( Shalof 2007).
Her success and pride throughout this paragraph was communicated so well that the reader could
probably visualize her success and how she felt. Although this paragraph wasn't necessarily the
best to describe how she was good at showing visualization. It showed how she demonstrates
emotions and can convey them well in her writings.
Overall, Tilda Shalof has influenced me in the aspect of my major/career and her
communication skills. She has influenced me by her communication skills to continue pursuing
nursing as well. Communication throughout the career of nursing all the time. There is always a
patient you have to communicate with. There are doctors that you have to communicate with and
other nurses as well. Nursing is a career where you have to use so many people skills, including
communication. She has influenced me to increase my communication skills because she has
shown me how often communication is used throughout nursing.

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Communication is used in everyone's day to day life in some aspect. Some use it different
ways then others, but for certain careers it plays a bigger role. Before reading Tilda Shalof's book
and listening to her speech, I had no idea how often communication is used in the Nursing field.
It is used for writing orders or prescriptions for patients. Nurses have to communicate between
each other to help effectively take care of their patients. They have to communicate to the
doctors what is going on with the patients. So overall communication plays a huge role in
nursing. Thanks to Tilda Shalof I have realized that and hope to improve my communication
skills as I go through college.

References
Bodary, D, Stuart, D, Sprague, J. 2014. The Speaker's Handbook, Communicate,
and Harbrace Essentials. Boston, MA.
Shalof, Tilda. Nurse Tilda
Retrieved from < nursetilda.com>
Shalof, T. 2007. The Making of a Nurse. Canada.
Shalof, T. (2015, September 29). Lecture presented in Memorial Hall, Lexington, KY.
Skills you Need. 2015. Writing Skills.
Retrieved from < http://www.skillsyouneed.com/writing-skills.html >

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Thomas, Francesca. 2007. blogspot.com

Retrieved from < http://bibliobiography.blogspot.com/2007/11/nursess-story-bookreview.html>

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