Developing Effective Communication in Health and Social Care

Unit 1 – Developing Effective Communication in Health and Social Care

Unit 2 – task 1 p1+p2

In health and social care setting, workers often have to communicate difficult or sensitive issues to clients. These clients may be venerable, stressed or in difficult circumstances. When we understand how the communication cycle works we can foresee these circumstances and plan the best way to communicate with these clients and to achieve the best outcomes for them.

The communication cycle is made from eight stages. From someone having an idea and expressing it. To somebody receiving the message and understanding it.

Here is a drawing of the communication cycle.

This could be shown as Dave seeing Mel in the street:

Stages

Someone gets an idea.
they then understand this idea
they express the idea, through verbal or non verbal communication
the other person sees and/or hears their message
they develop a feeling from this message
they understand their feeling
they express their feeling through verbal or non verbal communication
The first person sees and/or hears their feeling.

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And then the cycle starts again. And it leads into a conversation.

Types of communication

There are many different types of communication; and people can communicate in lots of different ways.

Verbal communication includes things like:

Writing a letter
Leaflets
Phone calls
Shouting
Email
Discussion
Prayer

And lots more...

Interpersonal interaction is the verbal and non-verbal sills we use to communicate.

There are loads of different ways to communicate verbally but also there are many ways to communicate non-verbally for example:

Touch
Proximity
Posture
Eye contact
Facial expression and more…

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And then the cycle starts again. And it leads into a conversation.

Types of communication

There are many different types of communication; and people can communicate in lots of different ways.

Verbal communication includes things like:

Writing a letter
Leaflets
Phone calls
Shouting
Email
Discussion
Prayer

And lots more...

Interpersonal interaction is the verbal and non-verbal sills we use to communicate.

There are loads of different ways to communicate verbally but also there are many ways to communicate non-verbally for example:

Touch
Proximity
Posture
Eye contact
Facial expression and more…

Communication isn’t just what you say, it includes a lot of things that we don’t necessarily notice at times, but we do subconsciously.

You need to be aware of both types of communication in a health and social care setting. For example; in a doctors surgery there are lots of leaflets that people can look through for information, this is verbal communication. But if they were to go to the doctor about this problem they would need to see the doctor on a one to one basis. In this situation, the doctor needs to be aware of this own interpersonal interactions. This means that he has to notice things like his body language because he has to appear open and comfortable to the service user because that will make them feel calm and they will feel like they can trust him.

They may also want to think about their tone of voice. Because if a service user goes to them with a problem, and they talk in a patronising tone, the service user may feel like they don’t want to talk to them anymore because they may feel intimidated, or they may think that the doctor may judge them about their problem and ultimately they may feel uncomfortable talking to the doctor.

When an adult talks to a child in a health and social care setting, they need to think about a number of interpersonal interactions to make it easier for the child to understand what they are trying to communicate. For example; if the adult wants to sit with the child to read a story, they need to think about noise levels because if the child is near other children that are playing, and being noisy. They may not be able to concentrate and they might get distracted by the other children, so you might consider taking them to a quiet place that isn’t too far away, but is a quiet and comfortable place to sit. Proximity could also play a part in this, because especially when reading a story with a child, children often like to be close to someone, so they might want to sit on your lap to read or even to sit close to you. It will also be better to sit closer to the child because if the noise levels are a little high then they will be able to hear you better, and you won’t have to raise your voice and risk scaring them/ the other children.

Another health and social care professional that may need to concentrate on their method of communication, is a social worker. For example, if they had to talk to a service user about a sensitive issue, then they would have to think about where the best place to have the conversation would be. Weather it was in an office, or a room in the service users house, it would have to be a quiet, light room that the social worker, and the service user would feel comfortable talking in.