Ethical Dilemmas In Health And Social Care

Communication is a very important aspect of health and social care. There are four very important things that need to be taken into consideration to make sure communication with anyone is successful. The four key aspects are to prevent misunderstanding, meet individual needs, build a relationship, and developing self-esteem.
Any misunderstanding can be prevented by clear speech, appropriate language, matching verbal and non-verbal communication, checking understanding and asking questions. A good understanding needs to be met for all tasks in any care setting, for example, good understanding between two carers to follow each other’s instructions to get a patient out of bed needs to be done without any injury to themselves or the patient. Preventing misunderstanding between other health care works (e.g. other nurses/doctors if the patient is being handed over into different people’s care), to avoid misunderstanding, making sure the new carers get all the patient’s notes, they need to ask any question’s if they are unsure of anything (they could ask the previous carers, the patient’s family or the patient themselves).
Meeting individual needs of a patient needs to happen as soon as they are referred to anyone in a health and social care setting, their notes need to be checked through and understood properly, and the patient and their family need to be involved as much as possible for providing information about their needs.
If the individual’s needs are not met, they may be given incorrect treatment. For example, if a person can dress them self, but that hasn’t been put across by written information or discussed with the patient, they may feel the carers are trying to do too much, so patients must be asked if they need help or not with tasks such as needing help with dressing, toileting, feeding etc. by the
carers.
Building a good relationship with patients is good to ensure that they can develop trust and divulged any personal information with their carer. It allows the patient to be able to disclose any personal information to someone they feel they can trust, and if they have a good relationship with their carer, it will make them feel comfortable and they are more likely to have a better experience using the health care service they are part of. For example, if someone was under the care of a physiotherapist and needed to discuss an appropriate treatment, they would need to know how well the patient is doing, if they didn’t have a good relationship, they’d get the wrong information and the patient wouldn’t be treated properly.
For a patient under anyone’s care, they need to develop a high and positive self-esteem. This will put them at ease, and they will understand that the people who help care for them value, respect and praise them. This could happen in an everyday conversation with people on a hospital ward, or in an elderly person’s home. Everyone in any health and social care setting should be treated equally and fairly.
Communication is so important because it allows people to express themselves in different ways, depending on their situation and needs. It can be done through verbal and non-verbal ways, and is expressed using body language, facial expressions and tone of voice, so people can also detect moods and emotions through communication.