NURS 220 Week 6 Discussion Board Forum 3 Example

Discussion Board Forum 3: Using STATE to Talk With a Group Member Who Has Gone Quiet

NURS 220 Advanced Nursing Communication, Discussion Board Forum 3

Thread by [Student Name]

The group project scene and classmates are composites; the textbook and journal articles cited are real.

Our group presentation is due in Week 7. One member, whom I will call Kim, has missed two internal deadlines for her slides and has not replied to the group chat in eight days. I volunteered to talk with her, and I used this week's chapter to plan the conversation. My first instinct was to post a pointed message in the group chat, which would have embarrassed her in front of everyone and almost certainly made her more silent.

Patterson et al. (2012) present five skills for speaking persuasively about a sensitive concern without becoming abrasive, summarized as STATE. I wrote out each step.

Share your facts: "Kim, the slide draft we agreed on for last Thursday hasn't been posted, and the last message from you in our group chat was eight days ago." I removed my first version, which said she had "disappeared," because that was a conclusion.

Tell your story: "I'm starting to wonder whether the project has dropped down your list, or whether something else is going on." The authors stress that the story must come after the facts, since facts make the story easier to hear.

Ask for others' paths: "How do you see it?" Talk tentatively: I used "I'm starting to wonder" rather than "Clearly you don't care." Encourage testing: "If I've got this wrong, I'd really like to know."

When I called her, she was quiet for a moment and then explained that her father had been hospitalized and she had been driving back and forth to another state. She had been embarrassed to tell the group. We agreed that she would take the shorter reference slides and that I would draft one of hers. She posted her first slide two days later, and the group chat, which had grown tense, became friendly again once the others knew what had happened. The facts opened the conversation; asking for her path is what made it a conversation.

Reply to Olivia

Olivia, you described watching a preceptor skip hand hygiene between two patients and being unsure whether a student could say anything. STATE seems made for that moment: "I noticed we went from Mr. A's room to Mrs. B's without sanitizing; am I missing something about the protocol here?" Your fear is understandable, but it is not only about you. Augusto et al. (2026), in a scoping review, charted the evidence on what nurse managers do, through their behaviors and strategies, to make teams feel safe to speak and to build a culture of patient safety, which suggests that whether a student can speak up depends partly on the unit's climate. If you are unsure of the climate, raising it with your clinical instructor first is a reasonable step. Would your instructor want to know?

Reply to Marcus

Marcus, your post about overhearing a faculty member mock a student's question in a hallway, and staying quiet, connects this chapter to a wider pattern. Sariköse et al. (2026) interviewed 20 academics in nursing and midwifery faculties and described how incivility becomes normalized and how silence serves as self-protection, reinforcing a cycle that weakens psychological safety. That research suggests that one quiet witness is part of a larger system, not simply a coward. A tentative approach could fit here too, perhaps with the student rather than the faculty member: "I heard that exchange; I thought your question was a good one." Sometimes restoring safety for the person harmed is the first step.

References

Augusto, C., Pereira, S., Cunha, D., Rocha, I., Lumini, M. J., Santos, R., & Gonçalves, P. (2026). The role of nurse managers in promoting psychological safety and patient safety culture in nursing teams: A scoping review. Healthcare, 14(16), 2590. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare14162590

Patterson, K., Grenny, J., McMillan, R., & Switzler, A. (2012). Crucial conversations: Tools for talking when stakes are high (2nd ed.). McGraw-Hill.

Sariköse, S., Sengul, T., Doğan, E., & Kaya, N. (2026). The iceberg of a healthy work environment: Understanding the spiral of incivility and silence in nursing and midwifery faculties: A qualitative study. Nurse Education Today, 164, 107131. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2026.107131