Being a pediatric nurse, you need to work with small children every day. Diagnosing and treating pediatric patients would require the nurse to have an ongoing conversation. But children, who are very young, will feel shy to communicate what and how they feel. So, talking to children can be very challenging for a pediatric nurse but in the end, it would be very rewarding too. The first thing to keep in mind while handling pediatric patients is that every child is different.

So, here are some more tips and guidelines for those in pediatric nursing who have difficulty talking to their little patients.

Common Challenges Faced by a Pediatric Nurse:

In general, pediatric nurses may find it challenging to handle their child patient in two situations. One situation is when they try to give vaccinations to the patients or convince them to take their blood for samples. This situation is quite difficult because dealing with the child’s fear of needles is not easy.

The other situation is when they try to collect accurate medical history from them. Gathering accurate information is important for the correct diagnosis, as well as for treating. While parents usually help in this regard, they aren’t always aware of everything happening in their child’s body. Normally, children will be energetic and their trip to the physician’s office or hospital will ramp them up further. So, getting information from them will be possible for the nurses only after calming them down.

Best Pediatric Nurse Tips:

The following are the best pediatric nurse tips that will enable the nurses to effectively communicate with the children:

Putting themselves into children’s shoes:

This is one the best tips to communicate with your little patients. Children will not listen to what others speak to them until the person goes down to their level. Before dealing with the child patient, the pediatric nurse must practice patience and try to speak to them at their level, both physically and mentally. In physical aspects, squatting can help children ward off their fear about visiting the doctor’s office. In addition, getting to the eyes of the patient will comfort him/her, which will make it easier to gain their cooperation.

Greeting them with a smile and empathy:

This point might seem simple, but it still would have a major impact on the child’s side. It’s important to greet the child with a smile when they are entering the room or meeting them for the first time. This is a way to show them the setting is friendly and safe for them. Also, children would tend to pick up the non-verbal communication more easily than verbal, so smiling is the best way to develop a connection initially. Empathizing with the child is also necessary since visiting a doctor’s office is a common fear among the children. As a pediatric nurse, you must try to understand what creates this fear in them. To help with this, nurses are advised to take some hints from developmental psychology to help understand the children’s mindsets a little better.

Using age-appropriate vocabulary:

Being a pediatric nurse, you would have to meet a wide variety of patients, from newborns to young adults. Engaging the pediatric patients would depend on the age, maturity, as well as developmental levels. As such, nurses should avoid medical jargons and talk to them in words that they will understand. This makes knowing age-appropriate vocabulary more important. To little kids, you need to be kind of silly, whereas, with school children, you need to catch up some common ground to talk about. On the other hand, with teenagers and young adults, the pediatric nurse must talk with the same respect she would use when handling an adult patient. To understand the real position of the child, nurses can always try to communicate with the patients first and get the real essence of where the child is at present.

Offering a kid-friendly atmosphere:

Making the office space kid-friendly is important to deal with the fear factor in children. Before greeting a child patient, the place should be prepared with bright colors and comforting stuffed animals, toys, children books, crayons, and so on. These things will make the children think it’s a fun place and they will not get scared about being in the doctor’s office. To further enhance the mood of the children, the nurses could also wear some cartoon scrubs, which could turn out to be a point of conversation between her and the children. Furthermore, the nurses can also encourage parents to bring comforting items when they visit the hospital. According to health experts, bringing an item that normally calms down the child will be helpful during the examination.

Final Thoughts:

Yes, of course, gaining the child’s attention and cooperation from a pediatric patient is not easy. But, at the same time, it’s not impossible! By keeping the child comfortable and by getting the help from the parents, the pediatric nurses can get connected with the child easily connect to offer a quality health care.