14 Strategies for Building Rapport with Service Users

Discover effective ways to build rapport with service users and patients to prevent agitated behaviour. Learn essential techniques for improving relationships.

25 June 2024
A doctor talking to a patient with a hand on their shoulder

How do you respond when a service user or patient gets agitated or violent? And better yet, how do you prevent agitation and violence from happening at all? 

Be Trauma-Informed by Building Relationships

We believe this can be achieved by building a rapport with the people we support and understanding what they have been through, where they’re coming from and how you can help them to cope and heal. This feeds into an improved relational approach, where the people we support feel an increased sense of reassurance and trust in the professionals.  

Furthermore, by establishing a rapport with service-users you’re able to become more trauma-informed and you’re subsequently better equipped to provide specific and individualised care. 

Knowing the individuals that you care for gives you the opportunity to shape your environment, resulting in healthier, more effective outcomes for the entire population. 

 

A nurse helping a patient with a walking assist

5 Elements of Person-Centred Care

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Strategies for Building Rapport

What specifically should you do to build rapport? Let these actions become second nature to you and a part of your everyday interactions: 

  1. Warmly greet everyone you see and/or pass.
  2. Learn the names of the individuals in your care. 
  3. Ask how their day is or how it’s going. 
  4. Ask how you can be of assistance.
  5. Be visible and available to the people in your care.
  6. Listen to how as well as what they are telling you. 
  7. Find opportunities to work together.
  8. Build mutual trust and respect.
  9. Be aware of an imbalance of power that may be felt.
  10. Promote empowerment.
  11. Encourage their voice and choice.
  12. Educate by considering what they may not know or understand.
  13. Be professionally curious in an open and transparent way.
  14. Celebrate accomplishments and milestones.

Getting to know and understand a person and their life experiences affords you the opportunity to provide better care, offer more specific and tailored services and have more successful interventions should they be needed. 

Keep the conversation going; what strategies do you use every day to build rapport with patients? 

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