NURS 325 Week 2 Discussion Board Forum 2 Example

Discussion Board Forum 2: What Benner's Helping Role Looks Like on a Busy Unit

NURS 325 Nursing Concepts, Discussion Board Forum 2

Thread by [Student Name]

The patient, the unit and the classmates are composites; the textbook and journal articles cited are real.

At 2 a.m., a woman in her fifties who had learned that afternoon that her biopsy showed ovarian cancer pressed her call light. She did not need pain medication or anything I could chart. She asked, "Could you just stay for a minute?" I had five other patients and a new admission coming. I stayed for about six minutes, sitting on the edge of the chair, and I have thought about those minutes since. When I left, she thanked me as if I had done something remarkable, and I felt the gap between how small the act seemed to me and how large it seemed to her.

Benner (2001) describes the helping role as the first domain of nursing practice and identifies competencies within it, including presencing, providing comfort and communication through touch, and maximizing the patient's participation and control in their own recovery. Reading the chapter, I recognized two of these in that night. I sat at her eye level and let her talk about her daughter's wedding, which was presencing. I held her hand when she cried, which was comfort through touch. The third, maximizing her participation, I missed; I could have asked what she wanted to know before morning rounds and written her questions down for the oncologist.

What struck me most in the chapter is that Benner treats these as skills, learned and refined, not as kindness that some nurses simply have. Patients seem to agree. López Herrera et al. (2026) interviewed 13 hospitalized adults about compassionate care, and healing presence emerged as one of its central meanings, alongside human connection and attention to the whole person; patients also described its opposite, care that felt rushed and impersonal. Six minutes at 2 a.m. may not look like much on a staffing grid, but to a patient it can be the difference between care that felt compassionate and care that felt cold.

My change is practical: when I cannot stay long, I will sit down rather than stand, say how long I can stay and tell the patient when I will come back, and then return. Presence is not measured in minutes but in whether the patient felt someone was fully there.

Reply to Danielle

Danielle, your description of a patient in the ICU who would only let one particular nurse suction him shows how much the helping role depends on trust. Benner (2001) describes creating a climate for healing and a commitment to the patient as part of the helping role, and your story suggests that trust is the ground those competencies grow in. Gabay and Ben-Asher (2026) followed nine older ICU survivors through interviews at discharge and a month later and found that hope emerged as a relational process closely tied to trust in nurses; compassionate presence built trust, while experiences of humiliation or aggression from staff damaged dignity and weakened patients' ability to trust at all. Your patient may have chosen that nurse because she had earned his trust in some small way that others on the unit had not noticed. It might be worth asking her what she does differently, since it could be taught to others on the unit. Have you noticed what it is about her approach that makes the difference?

Reply to Josiah

Josiah, I appreciated your honesty about freezing when a dying patient asked you whether you believed in heaven. Benner (2001) includes providing emotional and informational support to patients and families in the helping role, and spiritual questions often arrive right in the middle of it. Balboni et al. (2022), reviewing the evidence on spirituality in serious illness and health, concluded that spiritual needs should be incorporated into the care of seriously ill patients, and they recommended that clinicians receive training in recognizing these needs and referring to chaplains. That suggests your discomfort is a training gap rather than a personal failing. One approach that has helped me is to ask the patient what they believe before answering, which keeps the conversation about them, and then to offer a chaplain visit. Would your unit be open to a short in-service with the chaplain on responding to spiritual questions? Even a few practiced phrases might make the next conversation feel less like freezing and more like an invitation.

References

Balboni, T. A., VanderWeele, T. J., Doan-Soares, S. D., Long, K. N. G., Ferrell, B. R., Fitchett, G., Koenig, H. G., Bain, P. A., Puchalski, C., Steinhauser, K. E., Sulmasy, D. P., & Koh, H. K. (2022). Spirituality in serious illness and health. JAMA, 328(2), 184-197. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2022.11086

Benner, P. (2001). From novice to expert: Excellence and power in clinical nursing practice (Commemorative ed.). Prentice Hall.

Gabay, G., & Ben-Asher, S. (2026). Inspiring hope in critical care: The role of patients' trust in nurses. Nursing in Critical Care, 31(5), e70634. https://doi.org/10.1111/nicc.70634

López Herrera, F. E., González Duque, M. A., Zapata Pineros, M., Guzmán Vargas, M. C., Vélez Ángel, M. C., & Krikorian, A. (2026). El cuidado compasivo desde la perspectiva del paciente hospitalizado [Compassionate care from the perspective of the hospitalized patient]. Revista Cuidarte, 17(2), e5399. https://doi.org/10.15649/cuidarte.5399