Patient and Person: Interpersonal Skills in Nursing Stein-Parbury, Jane

This is a textbook for nurses who want to get better at the human side of healthcare — the conversations, the presence, the actual relating. Jane Stein-Parbury breaks down interpersonal skills not as soft fluff but as learnable, essential techniques: active listening, empathy, boundary-setting, managing difficult emotions (yours and theirs). It's grounded in theory but written for practice, with case studies and reflection exercises throughout. The focus is on therapeutic relationships — how to be genuinely helpful without burning out, how to communicate bad news, how to sit with someone's fear without fixing it. This is nursing as a relational art, not just a set of procedures. For nursing students, practicing nurses looking to sharpen their bedside manner, or anyone in healthcare who knows that connection matters as much as competence.