Book excerpt: If you're a nurse, or want to become one, you already know how incredibly fulfilling the profession can be. With skill and compassion, nurses save lives. There's nothing more gratifying than helping someone who trusts and depends on you to make it through a difficult time. Nursing can also be stressful - but that stress can be ameliorated by working in a great team, or exacerbated by passive-aggressiveness communication or hurt feelings. Keeping our patients safe and providing the most optimal outcomes depends entirely on our relationships with each other. Nurses who learn this material will be as confident in their communication skills as they are in their clinical skills per the AACN standards. The world needs nurse leaders who are bold, valiant, audacious and courageous. In "The Dauntless Nurse: Communication Confidence Builder" you'll learn to pro-actively address and eliminate the trivial and unnecessary frustrations that distract and undermine your confidence. You'll learn how to professionally respond to a multitude of human gestures: how to join a new group, communicate professionally, and become a master in constructively handling conflict and confrontation. Filled with tools and tips on how to communicate assertively and understand workplace culture, this book gives nurses the knowledge and skills needed to confidently address experiences and behaviors that leave them feeling undermined or uncertain. Understanding why these behaviors occur diminishes their effect. Knowing how to respond hard-wires your muscle memory. And reading scenarios of how other nurses have effectively handled similar situations builds the confidence that is characteristic of a Dauntless Nurse - you!