communication assignment

Communication is transferring information from one place to another and being able to get an idea or point across. Types of different communication are verbal, nonverbal and written communication. Verbal communication is spoken so it may be used when speaking to a person face to face, speaking on the telephone, speaking on the radio or any other media. Whereas nonverbal communication is using hand gestures, other gestures, body language, facial expressions or maybe even how we try to act towards others. However written communication involves writing letters, sending emails, writing magazines or books. Therefore, there may need to be ways to adapt how we communicate with other people so that we could meet their needs. Some people may have a hearing difficulty, sight impairment, disability or they might not understand English. In order to meet their need communication such as braille could be used for the sight impaired people, sign language could be used for the deaf, a translator would be beneficial for the people who don’t understand English or don’t have English as their first language and speaking clearly would be effective for people who have a disability. Effective communication can help you develop positively as it is really important to communicate effectively. Communication is used regularly within health and social settings. Effective communication can help form good working relationships between patients and other professionals as well as working with other colleagues. By having effective communication skills in a health care setting, the patient or the vulnerable person will feel safer and secure as they feel like they are treated properly and shown some respect. It will also allow the individual to express their needs and concerns as they will feel more comfortable towards the staff. Therefore, by having good communication skills, staff are able to share information with their colleagues and learn new ideas and thoughts. This improves their knowledge and their communication too. It is beneficial to communicate clearly and efficiently because the staff would know how to speak clearly to the patients and misunderstandings would be avoided. It is also beneficial to use interpersonal skills to interact with others properly by communicating efficiently and being able to solve problems. To make sure they are interacting properly with a person, the professionals would need to have active listening. This helps develop good communication as it shows that they are giving full attention and focusing carefully on what the person is trying to say. This is beneficial because it shows that the professional has interest in what the patient is saying. There are different ways in which professionals could communicate. One of them is one to one communication. This is where they would start a conversation with someone they don’t know well. By using this type of communication they are trying to create the right feeling so the tone is set. This will also benefit the patient or person because the atmosphere will seem positive so it will make them relaxed and happy, they will feel welcome because they were greeted kindly and they will feel engaged in the conversation when getting to know the professional. Also group communication can be used to discuss something with other colleagues in order to improve care for the patients. This is effective because everyone is able to express their ideas, concerns and get their point across through to the group. Therefore, while communicating in a group maintaining the group is important as the right atmosphere should be created so everyone feels engaged in the decision. Furthermore, formal communication is professionally used where doctors and nurses would talk to each other. Professionals may use this conversation with patients as the patients will feel respected. Also professionals would need to know how to use formal language correctly as they would need to know how to act when passing on good news and bad news. Moreover, informal communication may be used but more to do with friends and family. Professionals are less likely to use informal language unless they are talking with a friend. They would talk formally to patients as some patients may not be aware of some informal language so they may not understand what the doctor or nurse is saying. This could allow them to feel left out and indifferent as they don’t know the words that the professionals are using. Michael argyle was a social psychologist who developed a theory of human communication and interpersonal interaction. He believed that communication was learned like how a person would drive a car. In 1967 he found out that human communication is a two-way process where they send and respond to each other’s messages. This makes us understand how communication happens between two people in a one to one situation. For example, this could be a GP talking to his patient and asking what’s wrong with them, then the patient will tell the GP all their problems. Bruce Tuckman made research on group communication about forming, storming, norming and performing. He looks at group developments on those stages in order to make the communication effective. Tuckman suggests that professionals should use this development in order to ensure good communication in a care setting. For example, this could be used when nurses and doctors are working together to see how they could deliver effective care to the patients. Therefore, Gerard Egan was a psychologist who developed the SOLER theory. He believed nonverbal communication can make communication improve and become more effective between people. An example could be sitting down with a patient and listening actively to their worries and concerns making sure they show their interested and being attentive to the person carefully. Factors that may influence communication could be that there is a lot of background noise outside. This may cause It to be distracting as it would be less effective communicating to the patient. The healthcare professional may be distracted by the noise so they may not be listening or talking properly to the patient. This will make the patient think that the professional is not bothered or doesn’t want to listen to them. By having noise in the background, it could prevent the patient or the healthcare professional from hearing each other as they could misunderstand what is being said. This could cause them to be stressed and anxious. In order to overcome this, the health care professional would need to make sure they are in a quiet room with the patient so there isn’t a lot of noise to distract them. Also all windows and doors would need to be closed so no noise is coming in and traffic outside isn’t affecting the communication. For the communication to be effective, the healthcare professional may put a sign outside the room saying “do not disturb” to warn other people to be quiet as there is communication going on inside. This will avoid distraction and any noise that would disturb them while communicating. Phones would need to be switched of so they don’t distract anyone through the conversation and environmental noise need to be removed in order to get messages across clearly and accurately. By removing these barriers, it can give more open and effective communication because the communication will flow. Therefore, proximity meaning the distance you are a way from the patient could influence communication. Being too close to the patient could make them feel uncomfortable and intimidated. This could make them communicate less effectively as they don’t feel right. However, if the healthcare professional is far from the patient and trying to communicate with them then this could mean that they would have to speak louder. This may cause a negative impact on the patient as they may feel isolated and they may think that the professional is shouting at them because of how loud they are speaking. To ensure this barrier is not caused, the healthcare professional would make sure they are sitting at a right distance to the patient, so the patient is feeling comfortable. In order to see if the distance to sit is suitable, the professional could ask questions like “Can I sit here?” or “Are you alright with me sitting here?” This makes the patient feel like they are taken into account and treated with respect by the professional. Having difficulty speaking a certain language could in influence communication. This could mean that the patient may not speak English as they can only speak their own language. This is a disadvantage because they would not know what the professional is saying so that causes a barrier. Furthermore to overcome this barrier interpreters or translators would be needed for patients who don’t speak English, in order to communicate with them in a preferred language they understand. This meets the patients’ needs because they are given the information they need so they can understand it in a preferred way with the right terminology which is much effective. Lighting can effect communication. This is because if the room is too dark and the healthcare professional and the patient is communicating, then they may not be able to see each other, restricting them from seeing each other’s gestures and facial expressions. Therefore it can affect people who have a hearing impairment or disability as they may not see the person if the light is too dim. This would not enable them to lip read. In addition, the patient may fall over an object if the room is too dark so it could cause an injury as well as causing ineffective communication. However even if the light is too bright then it could cause problems as the patient may have difficulty with their sight or they may be visually impaired as well as bothering someone who doesn’t like the light being bright making it annoying for the patient. To make sure that this is overcome, the healthcare professional would need to ensure that the room lighting meets the patient’s needs. In addition, they would ensure that they could be seen clearly by the patient they are communicating with so the patient can see their facial expressions and hand gestures. Healthcare professionals would make sure their mouth is visible when speaking so patients with a hearing impairment are able to lip read and understand what is being said. The language that is being used can be a factor that effects communication. It is important for the healthcare professional to use the right language terminology when talking to a patient. This is because slang words such as “ennit” or “somet” might be used but this can cause misunderstandings because the patients may not get what is being said. In addition, abbreviations may be used by health care professionals, which could affect communication. The healthcare professional may say to the patient “you’ve got HBP” or “you need to go for a MRI”, but this can cause confusion to the patient because they do not know what is being said to them. This could also scare them because they do not know what is going to happen to them, as they may not know what a MRI scan is or what HBP means. In order to overcome this, when the healthcare professional is communicating with a patient then they would need to know who they are talking to and how formal or informal they need to be. If it’s formal then they would need to avoid using abbreviations or slang. To communicate effectively, the language that the healthcare professional uses needs to be relevant to the situation. If the information that is given flows and is communicated effectively, there would be less barriers as the more the language that is used correctly then messages are more likely to be understood by the receiver.The pace or speed a person speaks can affect communication. If a healthcare professional is speaking clearly and slowly in a way that the patient understands, explaining words that the patient needs clarification about, this results to effective communication between the professional and the patient. By speaking slowly, it can avoid confusion and help patients with a hearing, visual impairment or any other disability. Time may be needed for the patient to respond so communicating fast could cause the patient to be mixed up and they may find it difficult to express their point. However if the professional is going to speak for a long time to a patient, then they would need to consider suitable seating and seating arrangements. This would be beneficial because they would need chairs that are comfortable In order for the patient to be comfortable and communicate effectively. Feedback is an important tool that is used in the communication process. This is because, it helps reduce misunderstandings and mistakes when communicating. It can also be used to check what has been communicated and what can be done to make it effective. The process of feedback https://www.managementstudyguide.com/feedback_communication.htm is that the sender will transmit the message; the receiver gets the message, decodes it and provides feedback in response to the message they have received. Therefore, for communication to be effective and feedback to be used properly, there needs to be two people communicating or more. This allows feedback to be given verbally or in any sort of way such as nodding the head, using facial expressions. The sender would pass on the message in response to the feedback received to ensure that the right message is getting through. Feedback controls what is being communicated and makes the communication process become stronger.In order to overcome barriers to feedback the individual should ensure that feedback is helpful and won’t hurt others as people might be offended as they may take it in the wrong way. Also they would need to be specific about the feedback they are giving because the person might not understand what they are trying to say. The sender should ask the individual if they have any questions to make sure that the message is understood.Effective listening can be very difficult as there can be barriers. For example, if there Is a patient listening to a healthcare professional but they are fluent and they have a strong accent, then it could be hard to listen to them because might not get what they are saying as this could be a barrier. Therefore, by not giving a coherent message it can be a barrier to listening. Simultaneous listening can happen when someone tries to do this; this could be trying to understand information from two or more sources at the same time. This results in the messages not being received accurately. Whereas Active listening can allow information to be understood effectively and the person pays attention and concentrates.To overcome the barriers to listening the healthcare professional would need to stay alert and have an upright posture when listening to the patient. They would need to maintain eye contact to show they are interested in what the patient is saying and pay attention using non-verbal communication such as nodding or facial expressions. Furthermore the healthcare care professional shouldn’t try to plan out what they’re going to say whilst the patient is talking as this will cause them to lose concentration and not pay attention to what the patient is saying.People with hearing impairments or learning disabilities may use lip reading and sign language to communicate. Sign language are things finger spelling, British Sign Language and Makaton. Therefore, hearing aids can be used to help hearing impaired patient to communicate effectively cutting out background noise which is beneficial because they would be able to hear people better. However they may have disadvantages as the patients may not be comfortable wearing them or the hearing aids might run out of battery so the patient won’t be able to use them.People with visual impairment use braille to communicate. These are indentations on one side of a paper. They represent letters that can be touched and read by people who are blind.in a healthcare setting there would be braille on doors and lifts so that the patient would know here they are going. However, this could still be a problem because other people may not know how to use sign language or there may not be braille posters available in that time.Therefore, signs and symbols are used in the health and social care settings to show patients of the hazards and safety point around the healthcare setting. The signs and symbols are beneficial as they provide directions to patients and give information to those who are unable to speak or understand English.