Communication in health and social care

On a daily basis, we often speak, talk and interact with people around us. This is called communication, a way to send messages across different people or a group of people. Communication is indeed important because we use this on our daily routine; it is employ to convey information and messages across to different people. There are different types of communication that an individual or group could use. One of this is one to one communication and this is only a conversation between two people expressing and giving information to each other.

This type of communication is verbal as we speak or talk through our mouths and express ourselves by talking or speaking. This could also be a formal communication because one to one communication is use when you have a personal meeting to your supervisor or having an interview with organisations like hospitals or nursery. All care practitioners will be using one to one communication to communicate with their clients or patients. With regards of my work placement at Mapledown School, they a use one2one verbal communication to talk to their pupils with regards of their progress at school or it just happen to talk to each other.

Group communication, on the other hand is a form of communication utilized by a group of people as the name suggest. This kind of communication is also verbal but informal. It is informal because it is only a casual conservation between 3 or more people. Group communication often happens when a care home or nursery have a meeting to talk about their routine for the day. Referring to my placement at Mapledown School, group communication is also used. They often have circle time meaning they are in circle sitting down.

During their circle time, they talk about certain things like how is their day and greet everyone. Furthermore, teachers also use group communication with their colleagues to discuss their agenda for the day. Furthermore, some of the people use written communication. This type of communication is non-verbal and formal type of communication. It is non-verbal because it does not require speaking or talking. Written communication is use by care practitioners to communicate with their clients by writing them some updates about their nursery, or clinics or what had happened to their results etc.

From my experience at Mapledown School, they often use written communication to communicate with the parents and ask their pupils to give it to their parents. Those letters are information about trips that is going on and a slip form if they want their child to participate. Written communication could also be a non-formal type of communication, only when you use technology to communicate through texting or emailing. Text is informal because we often use slangs, shortcuts and this makes it informal.

Texting is often use in health care practitioners particularly, dentist, optician, check up to doctors and send a text message to their clients reminding them of their appointment. Email also uses to send reminders or memo to their members of staffs. Moreover, another type of informal communication is using social network websites like Facebook, Bebo and Twitter. These are used to communicate with friends, family members abroad. This type of communication is rarely use by care practitioners and only explanation could be because of privacy that it have on individual’s profile on their account and health and safety reason.

At my placement, they also use email as a type of communication that is technology because they kept in touch with me via email as well as calling me using mobile phones which is also technology. Another non-verbal type of communication is using arts and crafts. They often used as therapeutic activity in care fields. Arts and crafts are mainly use with children who has mental health problems, children who cannot talk or deaf or have learning difficulties as arts and crafts can send messages.

For instance, children will often draw a sad face to represent that they are sad, a happy face when they are happy. Furthermore, sign or visual language is also use as a type of communication. These are often use with people who have learning difficulties and people who are deaf. Teachers who works at school with learning difficulties students uses sign language to communicate with them. With regards of my placement, they often used sign language to communicate with their pupils because some of them have learning difficulties.

Also, they use arts and crafts to illustrate something like feeling etc. There is also an interpersonal interaction communication. These are when we interact with out clients or staffs etc. A non-verbal interaction could be our posture and body language. Our posture and body language are also use give or send impression or message to people around us. For instance, when we talk about serious things like on my work placement, we normally noticed that our posture and body language is not relax while when talk non-serious we are more relax like sitting in the staff room.

All care practitioner needs to be aware about this because their body language might offense someone. Facial expression is also a type of interaction. Facial expression indicates your feelings and these are normally shown through are facial expression. For instance, if we are happy then we will smile and if we are a bit stress, we tend to have a long face. At my work placement, a student who does not talk uses facial expression. For instance, the teacher asks a student if she is happy and the student just smile and nod which exemplifies that the particular student is happy.

Another type of interpersonal communication is eye contact. Having an eye contact on one2one conversation is good as it show that you are paying attention and as a respect. If you did not have any eye contact with each other, they you would think that no one is paying attention with you. For instance, at my work placement, I saw some student not having an eye contact with their teachers while talking to them and I think that is absurd and unacceptable and so the teacher put the students on detention because it does not show respect.

Proximity is also one of the interpersonal communications. Its means distance between the sender and the receiver. It is very important that if you are speaking about sensitive issues, you should not shout across but go next to them instead to tell them that. That also shows care for them. For instance, at my work placement, students who speaking far a way cannot understand each other so they have to be next to each other in order to sense what the sender is saying.