Verbal Communication In Health And Social Care

Communication is the imparting or exchanging of information by speaking, writing, or using some other medium. With in all health and social care settings workers have to talk to service users. It’s important that they are communicated to in the correct way to way and they are made to feel accepted and respected.
Verbal communication
Verbal communication is getting across a message, idea, or feeling through the use of mouth. Verbal communication is the main way of communicating face-to-face. The key components of the verbal communication are words, sound, speaking, and language.
Non-verbal communication
This is communication without words, the messages we send out with our eyes, facial expressions, hands and arms, gestures and posture.
Posture can affect the way interactions are interoperated. This could be the way we sit or stand e.g. sitting with your arms folded could be interoperated as the person “doesn’t care” or “isn’t listening” and leaning back could be seen as the person is relaxed or bored. Whereas leaning forwards could show interest and involvement. The way we move can also effect the way we are interoperated e.g. the way we walk, move our head, sit, cross our legs can send out messages whether your are bored, happy sad or tired. If you face someone it may come across that you are angry or formal, a slight angle can create a relaxed friendly feeling. Some hand and arm gestures help us understand what a person is saying. Facial expressions can also indicate your emotions and effect the may your communication is being interoperated. For example if a person is sad they may look down and there may be tension in there face, where as a happy person will have wide eyes that make eye contact with you. You can also tell a persons emotions trough eye contact, if the person has a fixed stare it may come across that they are angry.
One-to-one communication
When you start a conversation with someone you don’t know well, you should try to create the right kind of feeling. It is important to create a positive emotional atmosphere before you discuss complicated issues or give people information. The people need to feel happy and relaxed to talk to you. Often people start a convocation with a greeting like ‘good morning’ or ‘hello’. You can help the other person stay relaxed by showing you are relaxed and friendly.
Once you have created the good feeling, you can move on to the business (whatever you want to talk about). When you finish the convocation you want to leave the person with positive emotions so you may say something like ‘see you soon’ so the individual feels valued. Formal convocations often follow a three stage model.
1) Emotional warm up stage with a greeting
2) Business or exchange of information
3) Winding down with a farewell
e.g. a social worker meeting with a new client will want to make them feel at ease and like they can talk and not feel anxious and worried about sharing information with them.
Group communication
Group discussions only work if individuals actually want to be involved.
Talking to a group can often make people feel threatened and they may keep quiet to avoid this feeling or to avoid other people’s reactions to their opinions. It is therefore important to make sure the group has the right emotional atmosphere. People in groups often use humour or other friendly behaviour to give the group the right feeling to encourage everyone to talk. In some group talks such as team meeting and class room discussions there is a leader. Having this leader can be useful to encourage people to express their ideas and opinions and help the group co-ordinate taking turns with talking. The group leader can also help focus the group on one topic. Group communication fails if everybody speaks at once. It is important that people sit in a circle so they can see each other to creating a positive feeling and it makes it more successful in turn
taken.
e.g. during counselling there may be group sessions for things such as bereavement. The group talk about there experiences of loss as a coping mechanism.
Informal communication
This is often used when we know people well e.g. family and friends. Some family, friends and local groups may use terms that other people may not understand and have their own ways of speaking. Example “Hiya mate. How’s it going?” if you belong to this group you would understand that this is a friendly way a greeting and speaking to one another but to an outsider they may find it hard to understand.
Formal communication
Health and social care settings can provide both formal and informal communication.
If you went to any health and social can setting you may speak to someone at reception who would speak to you in a formal manner. You would be greeted by a phrase like “Good morning, how may I help you?” this formal communication is used as it widely understood and shows respect to others. The degree of formality used is called the language ‘register’. Some people may prefer to greeted in an informal manner as it puts them at ease and feel like the person they are speaking to is like them. However in many situations informal language can make people feel that they aren’t respected. If you are formal you may also offend others and come across posh and
pretentious.
Communication between colleague
Even if you communicate poorly your friends and family usually understand you but communicating with the people you work with can be different because:
• It’s important care workers communicate respectfully to each other. Colleagues who don’t show each other respect may not show clients the respect they deserve
• You may often have to greet colleagues by asking if they are well and spend time on a warm up talk in order to show them you value them
• To demonstrate you are a good listener you will need to listen and remember details of convocations with colleagues
• Colleagues have to develop trust in each other. This way you demonstrate you can respect the confidentiality of convocations with colleagues
• Work settings have their own social expectations about the correct way to display thoughts and feelings. These may differ from social expectations when communicating with friends and family.
Although communication between colleagues may often be informal but it’s important that care workers use skilled communication to develop respect and trust.
Communication between professional people and people using services
Professional people, like doctors, sometimes communicate in a specialised language. A ‘language community’ is a group of people that develop its own special words phrases social expectations and ways of interacting. Professionals are aware they need to translate technical language into simpler terms for the people who use their service. Its important professionals should check they have been understood.
Multi-agency working
Health and social workers often have to communicate with people who work with different organisations. Example, home care organiser may have to communicate with nurses, doctors, hospital staff, occupational therapists, voluntary group, day care groups and many others. It’s important to remember people from other group may not understand your service uses needs, formal communication with they may be necessary when talking to a new organisation to give an them a good impression about you.
Multi-professional working
Professionals from different back ground sometimes work together, e.g. doctors and psychologists, to get the best for the services uses. Communication will often need to be formal and careful to avoid barriers to understanding. This may be a doctor referring a patient to a councillor after the death of a family member.