One of my strengths is my ability to communicate therapeutically by using good communication tactics. This encompasses both verbal and nonverbal communication skills that foster positive interpersonal and professional relationships with your patients and your coworkers. Good communication techniques can also be used with your families, and your friends.

I believe that using therapeutic communication with your patients help to build better therapeutic relationships with them and can even get them to open up about their lives. Therapeutic communication is a very important tool in nursing, and it is one of the skills that I tried to learn and harness while I was in nursing school because I knew it would help me become not just a better nurse, but also a better person. Therapeutic communication is an invaluable approach to interactions with patients that is applicable across multiple disciplines (Naveen & Gupta, 2022).

As a registered nurse/future Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner and also as a person, I believe that it is good to have a non-judgmental approach when dealing with patients and also with people. I am currently in my second year as a practicing registered nurse, and I have worked with different patients from different places, races, ethnicities and nationalities, and I have seen so many things and heard so many things from my patients about their lives, and things they have done or wish they could take back, and I never judge them at all, rather I try to learn about them so I can treat each of them with the respect they deserve and try to assist them in the best way that I can.

Based on my completion of the self-assessment form, I believe that I do have some areas that I need to work on to become a better nurse and a better Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner. One of the areas noted on the skills assessment form that I would like to improve would be my ability to differentiate between normal/abnormal age-related physiological and psychological symptoms/changes and my ability to perform and interpret a mental status examination.

I do believe that for me to improve on these areas, I will need to continue learning more about psychiatric illnesses from my school, books (especially the DSM 5 book), and job so I can be able to apply the knowledge in my clinical setting.

According to Price & Reichert (2017), personal and professional development is another way to improve on the above weaknesses and acquire new skills and knowledge that will foster the provision of evidence-based care as a PMHNP.