Reframing: A Strategy to Improve Care of Manipulative Patients

Abstract

The use of reframing as a means of increasing nurses' choices in their behavioral responses to manipulative patients and an example of how the process might be used to influence nurses' perceptions are discussed. Perceptions influence nurses' behavioral responses. As individuals, nurses become accustomed to approaching new situations with familiar behaviors, and they lose sight of alternative responses. Choices will expand through the process of reframing, an intervention commonly utilized in therapy situations and a method for challenging the attitudes, values, and responses of a person. Simply defined, reframing is changing a person's interpretation of a given situation and therefore changing his or her behavioral response to it. Expanding nurses' choices is a step toward providing improved patient care.