Body Language for Emergency Room Nurses

Body language is often talked about within the context of business only. Interestingly enough, this is only a thin slice of where non verbal communication can be used to influence the outcome of your communication. The hospital setting is one such environment.

When people show up in the emergency room at a hospital, the emotions they are experiencing run from "very concerned" to "horrified."

Research is continues to support the fact that non verbal cues can have a tremendous impact on our communication with others. The last thing a patient in the ER needs is a nurse that is communicating fear with their body language. In this instance, a cybernetic loop of "fear-more fear-fear-more fear" is created between the patient and the healthcare provider.

By learning to become aware of the signals we are sending with our body, and then delivering the non verbal signals that would best support the situation at hand, we can dramatically alter, not only the mental, emotional and psychological responses of those we are talking to, but we will be causing their body's very chemistry to change for the better.

Having worked on oncology and cardiology floors at the San Diego Nava Medical Center, I can tell you that something as simple as a "pleasant smile" is not delivered to patients, by nurses and/or physicians nearly enough. We now know that "Mirror Neurons"- discovered recently by Italian researchers at the University of Parma actually cause us to mimic, and thus feel, something similar to what the people we are looking at are doing with their body and expressions.

By simply placing a smile on your own face- even if you have to force it-changes in your chemistry begin to occur in seconds. Because of mirror neurons, we can assist others with useful changes as well.

Again, because of the way mirror neurons work, once we have caused someone else to smile, their feedback will actually reinforce our own smiling, making it even easier for use to smile and feel good, and back and forth it goes.

How much more energy would you have at the end of a 12 hour shift if you were using your body language in a way that, as research has proven, caused a significant drop in stress hormones such as cortisol, and increases in anti-aging hormones like DHEA?
Begin using something as simple as a smile more often, and you'll find that both you and the patients you care for feel better.