The importance of communication in care settings

Communicationis not just what you say. It is the tone of voice that you are using and the way you portray how you are feeling, for instance the way that you are standing will indicate how you are feeling towards whoever was with you if you were relaxed and open you would be standing with your head up and arms relaxed. If you were upset or didn’t want to talk then you’d be stood there with your head down and arms folded across your chest.

Eye contact is important and in the UK the majority of people look at each other for 70% of the conversation whereas in Japan they only look at one another for 50% of the time. Your confidence is shown in your eye contact if you are walking down a street with your head held high and briefly meet others eyes it shows that you are confident in yourself and what you are doing.

Only a small part of communication is what you are actually saying this can make it complicated when you are communicating with others as what you are saying will mean perfect sense to you but it may be interpreted to mean something completely different.

In most cases the tone of your voice is either taken for granted or perceived unconsciously. The tone of how you say something is 38% of the way that you communicate. 55% is non verbal communication and what you say is only 7%. This shows that awareness of the appropriate tone and good voice control this is important for all care workers.

Communication skills are a vital and necessary to have in any care setting. If you have good communication skills you can make sure that you get every thing done as efficiently and effetely as possible.

Also when you are dealing with people in a social careenvironmentyou will need to make sure that they understand what you are saying or meaning, you have to build a trusting relationship with your clients and make sure that they are at ease, this is because you might be dealing with vulnerable people, the elderly or people with learning difficulties.

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To meet you client’s needs you would help with housing, washing, shopping or with anything else that the individual may need. Some of the elderly clients may be suffering withdementia. This may result in them acting in an unpredictable way.

The medical side is different although communication is just as fundamental, as you may have to find something important out quickly to prevent further distress to the patient.

When you go and visit youdoctoryou only have a 10 minute time slot and in them 10 minutes your GP has to find out what is wrong explain and give you treatment. This would not happen if you and your doctor could not communicate properly. Your patients will be aware of your body language so you need to show them that you are comfortable and that you want to hear what they have to say; also you need to show them that what they are saying is important. So eye contact and openness is vital. You don’t want to be sat typing away at your computer when your patient arrives as that automatically says you have something more important to do other then greeting them. Also when people are in pain or ill they tend to become emotional and anxious. Then as thehealthprofessional it is your job to make sure that you have the situation under control. A GP or any other health professional needs to make sure that they use the correct type of tone this is make sure that the patient feels comfortable and valued also by using the appropriate tone you can make yourself sound interested, caring and encouraging.

Effective communication is central to a good working practice of all early years’ professionals andrelationships with childrenand their families/carers may be impaired without it. Communication involves a successful exchange of information from one person to another.

When working with the early years you have to take in to account of their age and their understanding level. You can not expect a child of 3 to understand eye contact or subtle body language. You need to make sure that you are communicating to them on their understanding level not yours. You will also have to compromise for their lack of speech and their unpredictability when they cant communicate with you. So for communication to be successful it needs to meat the needs of both speakers and any breakdown will result in a lack of communication taking place

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Oral communication would be one of the most important ways of communicating in the social, medical and early years setting, as within these settings you have to build up a trusting professional relationship. That advantage to oral communication is that you can exchange information quickly. The service provider can explain situations and answer any questions that may arise. When speaking with someone you can make sure that whoever you are communicating with understand what you are saying. Also if necessary and appropriate you can comfort if what you are saying is distressing.

In a social setting oral communication is vital for a nurse as she not only has to be able to communicate efficiently and for the best of her clients she has to be able to hand over their information correctly to the next shift of nurses if she was to get this wrong it may jeopardise the patient. Also with oral communication you can nominally tell how your clients are feeling if they have a quite tone then it may be that they are depressed, feeling sad or passiveness. If they had a loud or excited tone this could mean that they were fearful, feeling angry or aggressive. Skilled care workers can pick this up and act appropriately.

It is an important role of a care worker to be able to understand, relay and gather information not just with the patients but also with her work team. On a typical day a nurse would have to record what medication was given, the amount and the time it was administered she would do this so she could pass it on to other nurses so they are aware of the medication that, the patient has had. Communication can fail if there is a lack of knowledge this could leave the people involved feeling inadequate.

Communicating orally in an early year’s environment can be demanding and frustrating. You not only have to build up trusting relationship and understanding with the children you also need to do this with their parents/carers and the rest of your team.

When communicating with young children they may not always understand what you are saying to them but the can hear your tone of voice and the tone of voice used conveys a message to the child which at times be the wrong message.

For example. To ask a child ” what are you doing” may be interpreted by a child as a negative question if the tone of voice is wrong.

When you are talking to young children and are asking questions or giving guidance you need to do so in a clear voice and in bite size pieces. Like ” go and get your shoes” not ” go out the hall into the shoe area find your shoes and put them on. Then come back to me” this is because their understanding level is lower then yours and the short term memory only last for 30 seconds and by the time they have left the room they would have forgotten.

When talking to parent/carer you need to establish whether they would prefer you to communicate with them in an informal or formal way. This is the register of language. Some parents and most certainly the children will prefer you to great them in an informal way as this may put them at ease.

Within a medical setting you need to remember to use the correct type of language (register of language) formal language would be better unless requested from the patient. If a medical receptionist was informal then the patient may think that are being disrespected.

As a GP you will communicate aurally most of the time to you patients this mean that the GP has the advantage that the tone of voice can betray how the patient is feeling emotionally and if relevant the GP may be able to help or refer them to another source. This is the GP taking care of his patient’s emotional and physical wellbeing. As a GP you will have to work and communicate with people that have different styles of speaking such as ethic groups and people that come from different work andculturesettings.

Verbal communication for a nurse at A+E is about buliding a relationship quickly with all types of people from all walks of life they have to be calm so she needs to have gained their trust. Also they have to exchange information to one another. Nurses and paramedics use a pain scale asking how bad the pain is from 1 to 10 this is especially good for children as they cant always describe what pain they are in.

Written communication in any organised setting is one of the most important factors. This is because of keeping records. Getting the right support for your clients. Without written communication you would not be able to do this.

In social care setting it may not be the choice of some of your clients. If you have clients that are profoundly deaf or very hard of hearing it would be more appropriate and polite to send them a letter rather then ringing them.

There would be little point of finding out effective way to communicate with a client and then not making an accurate record so that other people can also communicate with that person.

The type of things that you would record as a care worker would be what problems your clients have how it affects them both emotionally and physically. What action should be taken by yourself and others. Always add the date and whether you administered medication, and any other day to day things that you do.

Most of the written communication will be between you and your colleges on a professional basis. You will mainly communicate with your clients in a more informal way

When working in an early year’s environment it is important to keep parents well informed. You need to pass information through ways that parents can access. The easiest way to do this is by written communication. This can be in many ways such as news letters once a month with general information in them, home and setting books so that you can keep in contact with the parents that way this is a good way for people that have child care so they know what is going on a daily basis, notice boards so that you can display reminders and notices and displays of the children’s work throughout the setting so that the parents can see for them selves that their child is doing constructive things while at the setting

When working with early years children it is easier sometimes to use visual pictures as aids so that a child can associate a picture with a meaning or a word. For example you may put their picture on their coat per and a picture of a coat above them. Children respond and understand picture writing rather then just the written word.

Staff in the early years setting will also do reports on the children’s development and what aspects they need to improve on. This is to accommodate their social, physical, emotional and intellectual wellbeing and prepare them for school.

The types of medical written information that you would get would be letters and reminders about appointments whether at your GP’s clinic, medical centre or local hospitals. You may get test results or letters about your tests and the results. You may also get formal letters indicating a change of location.

Every doctor has his patient’s notes and information this is to see what illness and treatments that you have had in the past and whether you are allergic to anything. He keeps them as records nowadays stored on a computer so no matter where you are they can locate your files. As a patient you may get extra correspondence from your GP regarding any medical check ups that you need

GP’s and other health professionals use written communication to refer patients to one other service providers.

Being an employee in any care setting you will come across people with hearing and visual impairments there are a number of ways to carry on or start communicating with your clients.

Communication between hearing and deaf people is not always straight forward. Quite often the response of a hearing person is to either talk more loudly or over emphasise lip patterns, this will actually cause more difficulty. However the ability and awareness of how to communicate clearly can solve many day to day issues.

Makaton is a type of system that uses speech, signs and symbols to help people with learning difficulties to communicate, and to develop their language skills. People that speak Makaton will use speech as well as body language they don’t just silent sign. Makaton is a form of augmentative and alterative communication (AAC).

Makaton is used with both children and adults who are unable to speak or whose speech is difficult to understand. Makaton is a key word signing system that aims to provide a basic means of communication and encourage language development. When using Makaton the key words will still be spoken as well as signed. If you have a client in your care it is bested advised to try and learn some of their preferred way of communication, although you will pick up some meanings.

Braille is a type of communication that instead or words are raised marks that can be felt wit the fingers. This provides a type of written communication that can be used by people with limited or no sight.

Braille is usually taught to those who are totally blind from youth. Moon is usually taught to people who loose their sight in later life. Both moon and Braille are raised symbols that correspond to the alphabet.

British sign language is a visual/spatial language which is governed by its own grammatical rules using shapes, hand movements and facial expressions to convey meaning leading to successful communication.

There are 9, 000, 000 deaf or hard of hearing people in the UK, with distinct differences in the way that they wish to communicate. Approximately 80, 000 people sign language as their first language.

Electrical aids have made communication much easier. Information displays on computer screens such as information kiosks ands bulletin boards are increasingly being used for public communication.

Other then e-mails and telephone and the internet there are loads of other ways to communicate using moderntechnology.

Technology can be made friendly and accessible to people that are blind or have low vision for example:-

you have voice synthesisers can be installed to read out loud the text on the screen. There is also Braille and other tactile symbols can be embossed on the buttons used on the display. You can also get special scanners to convert text into a read out which is relayed to the user by voice synthesisers or convert the words on a printed page into very large sized text on the computer screen.

Communication via computers has enabled society to be able to communicate efficiently, accurately and quickly. Within a hospital and emergency environment to communicate the correct information and quickly you need computerised communication.

For example somebody comes into A+E with a suspected broken arm they get sent to the Department to have an x-ray. After taking the photos they send them back to A+E. this saves time andmoney. It is efficient and it is to the best of the patients as treatment can be administered more quickly. In effect it’s taking care of their physical and emotional wellbeing. This is not the only benefit that computerised communication has, at the scene of an accident the paramedics will contact the hospital to let them know who is coming in and why their age and any other infomation that they have on them. This is to ensure that upon their arrival the correct treatment can be administered, Especially if it is a life threatening situation. Even though the need of speed may be vital they also have to be accurate, clear and understandable as its about somebodys care.