Nursing Soft skills Vs Hard skills: Impact on Patient Care

Soft skills, refers to skills that are above and beyond the psychomotor tasks that nurses complete.
They have been loosely defined as skills that enhance interpersonal interaction. It is important to
see these skills as a distinct and learnable part of nursing. Soft knowledge and skills are the
emotional, spiritual and caring aspects of the profession. These are harder to measure, but no less
important and valued. In fact, they are critically important to patients and their families during
their time in the health system. “Hard knowledge and skills” are those that can be measured. This
hard knowledge and skill is important and tangible, and patients benefit from it.

Nurses have 4 distinct domains of practice: clinical, administrative, educational, and research.
Each of these areas is united by the fact that we use the nursing process. While the bulk of
nursing takes place in the clinical domain, each of these domains is essential. They reflect how
nurses create professional knowledge (research), learn professional knowledge (educational),
apply professional knowledge (clinical), and foster the creation/learning/application of
professional knowledge (administrative).

Nurses use interpersonal and communication skills to connect between domains of practice, and
share our insights and our challenges. This is important because clinical nurses may have a great
suggestion for new nursing research initiatives. Nurse educators may inform nurse administrators
about a need for advocacy around educational funding. Our soft skills can break down barriers
and strengthen the integration of our domains of practice, making nursing practice easier for all.
Nursing runs on this complex integration of knowledge; however, a lot of it can happen
internally and it is not seen or recognized by others. When we can articulate what we are doing,
using our nursing knowledge as a framework, we demonstrate the full range of nursing. This will
increase the appreciation and respect for our profession.
No matter where we work, nurses make a difference for patients. When you ask patients what
makes the biggest impact to them during a hospital stay, nursing communication ranks
consistently as one of the most important factors. Increasingly, employers care about soft
skills. Now that patient experience is a common measuring point in hospitals (whether it should
be or not- this is reality), administrative nurses are hiring clinical nurses for
personality instead of experience or background. Soft skills are an essential part of nursing,
across all domains of practice and types of nursing knowledge. Research has demonstrated that
communication makes a huge impact for patients, and is the most important aspect of being a
health care leader. In light of this, we need to consider soft skills as seriously as any other type of
nursing skill.