Process recording- Please NEED HELP!!

we had to do process recordings in my bsn program and i did one on a schizophrenic patient whose speech i can only describe as being a combination of word salad and paranoia. he was a challenge. i actually taped my conversations with him with a pocket recorder because there was no way i could remember exactly how he worded things. never kept the process recording, however. if you were given a form(at) to follow, that's the way you write these things up. ours was a group of columns. column #1 was the transcript of the conversation in a line by line format. he said. i said. column #2 was to classify the statement (see the links below). column #3, i believe, was an analysis of whether our reply was therapeutic or not and if we should have responded in another way. column #4 was for the correct therapeutic response we should have made and it had to be referenced.

these are pretty much the on the same level as a term paper. i can't imagine starting on it the night before it is due. also, you need to remove your e-mail address from your post. it's against the tos to post your e-mail address.

here are links to information on therapeutic communication. these sites have information on how to classify the different types of statements.

http://www2.nemcc.edu/rlansdell/web/communication%20test-taking%20strategies_files/frame.htm - a really nice slide show on therapeutic communication. includes techniques, scenarios and blocks to communication.

http://www.childbirths.com/euniversity/therapuetic.htm - therapeutic communication. a discussion about therapeutic communication that includes a nice listing of examples of appropriate open-ended responses to make to patients to get them to talk.

http://academic.luzerne.edu/nfrusciante/nur203/powerpoints/therapeuticcommunication_files/frame.htm - a slide show on therapeutic communication. talks about the components, goals, therapeutic and non-therapeutic techniques.

http://faculty.mc3.edu/rbenfiel/nur109/nur109communication/sld001.htm - communication. a slide show (18 slides)

http://www.education4skills.com/thecom/contents.html - therapeutic communication skills tutorial - page of links to subjects covered

http://www.unc.edu/courses/2004fall/nurs/090/001/class6/index.html - therapeutic communication. some online information and practice modules from the university of north carolina chapel hill school of nursing. click on the links on the left side of the page to access activities.

http://monsoon.he.net/~eri/realaudio/therapeutic/thera.htm - a lecture series on therapeutic communication and the nursing process on cds that you can access at this website from education resources, inc. you need a real player to view the video.

Fudge it. Your grade is at stake. Like I said this is like a term paper. When my instructors discovered I was taping conversations I got a "talking to" about patient confidentiality. This was back in 1985 before HIPAA. On the next process recording I was having a hard time remembering exactly what the patient had said. Now, I have a really bad attitude, I will be the first to admit. I made up whatever sounded good and that I could work with. But, sh-h-h-h! You didn't hear it from me. I'm a practical person and when my grade was on the line, practicality won out.

By the way, welcome to allnurses! :welcome:

I gotcha, Josh. I've been a student enough over the years to realize that making the stuff up is just as hard to do as using real information! The end result is that you learn all about therapeutic communication. That's the instructor's real purpose of the whole assignment, I think. I don't know what else to tell you except that some of it just has to be from memory and some of it you have to embellish on what you think you remember. Mine were packed in a box that got wet in a flood and had to be thrown away. We had to do at least one process recording for each of our clinical rotations. They were like term papers with footnotes and bibliographies. I did have them on old floppy discs because I created them on my old Apple II, but ditched the discs a long time ago when I upgraded. Computers today don't even accommodate those old kinds of floppies. Apple II's are collector's items now!

Joni's Mom reminded me that there was non-verbal cues we included in these things as well.

I don't think anyone likes doing them. I have to say that they are valuable tools though. You won't realize it until much later in your career. Take a few breaks while you're working on this project today or you won't see any mistakes you might be making. What your instructor is probably going to be looking for is that you classify each statement correctly as well as looking at your self-analysis. That tells them if you are understanding the whole idea of therapeutic communication. They are always going to be looking at your thinking skills. You can make mistakes and if you recognize that you made the mistake as you write this thing, more power to you. That's what they're looking for. At least, that's what they were looking for in my BSN program and they were all about communication skills. They didn't expect us to have perfect therapeutic conversations, but to recognize what it was we were doing wrong. I swear, the more I included the agony I was going through, the more they liked reading what I had to say. When I figured that out, I gave 'em more. We had to keep a journal of our clinical experiences and turn it in periodically. I love to write.

I imagine that the student who turns in the perfect conversation between patient and nurse probably gets an "F" or, at least, suspicious glances from the instructor. Therapists study and work on honing these communication skills for years. As nursing students we only get a couple of shots at it. Nobody can master the stuff that fast.