Teaching interpersonal management for effective professional nursing practice.

The treatment environment is an important component of patient care. In order to provide more effective patient care one would want to be able to manipulate the environment, particularly the emotional environment. This is difficult to do and even more difficult to teach. The authors describe a teaching module in a baccalaureate program in nursing in which didactic sessions and behavioral rehearsal analysis techniques are combined. The goal is to teach interpersonal manipulation for more effective management of professional nursing practice. The results have been promising.