Communication in health and social care with the service user and service provider plays a very important role. It is needed to develop positive relationships and share information with people that are using the services.
It’s also needed to be able to communicate well with service user’s families or carers as their own colleagues and other professionals. There are two ways to communicate in health and social care either verbally or non-verbally. Health and social care settings can be voluntary, statutory or non statutory. Statutory care settings are governmental such as NHS and Non-statutory means it is not laid down in law.
Laws passed by Parliament are statute and go into the statute book. Non statutory can be regulations that are set by ministries but don't go onto the statute book. Guidance and policies can also be regarded as non-statutory, though their provisions may still be expected to be met by various controlling bodies and local and central government. Service users are usually the people who use a service like for example old people are the service users to the residential homes as well as children are the service users to nurseries. You might engage in a conversation in a residential home, a hospital, in a nursery, in a care home, etc.You are likely to be communicating with doctors, social workers, nurses or family.
The two main contexts of communication are one-to-one and group interaction. One-to-one interaction is the act of an individual communicating with another. It must be kept private and confidential. For example I have had a one to one interaction with a child while I was dressing him up. Group interactions are normally preformed by two or more people and do not have to specifically be kept confidential. For example I have had a group interaction with all the children while I was playing with them, but the information shared was not confidential.
Characteristics of these contexts can be formal and informal. They are usually taken for example in a care setting with the manager or the director or a care worker as an interview or meeting. Much informal communication occurs on a person-to-person basis, in a face-to-face manner. Other ways to communicate in an informal manner may include texting, post-it notes, and an informal drop in visit to another person, or a quick and spontaneous meeting.
The role of verbal communication is the ability of two or more people being able to communicate and understand each other.It is important so the people interacting can understand each other; pass on information which will be received correctly by the other person they are talking to. We can make sure that we effectively communicate by using clear voice while talking , also make sure that our tone of voice is not too low for the person we are talking to not to be able to hear us or too high which will seem like we are shouting at the person we are talking to. It is also important that the language we are using is the same as theirs or else they wouldn’t be able to understand us.A different dialect will also be a problem as they have a different way of pronouncing words and the person who we are talking to might not be able to understand us as they have their own way of pronouncing words and might not be familiar with the accent so it will be an issue to understand them. Another issue would be using slang or jargon as many people use it a lot in their everyday life but different places have their own, and in formal communication is not appropriate to use any of those it wouldn’t sound good as it would not be appropriate.
There are different ways of communicating non-verbally like for example, using body language, facial expressions, posture, proximity, touch, silence and reflective listening. Formal communication is used in the workplace mostly and with people we don’t know like for example, we approach our manager or boss in a formal way while informal communication is between people we know and are close to such as friends and family. An effective communication is one where we can understand each other properly and transmit information correctly to the person to whom we are talking to.An effective communication is when we have exchanged information with someone and they have received the information correctly. It is important that the communication is effective in relationships with service users and their families because it is essential in order to meet the specific needs of the service user and their families. It is important that we have an effective communication with the manager or our colleagues when having problems in the work place with customers or any other problems you cannot deal with alone so you can explain it to them and they would be able to help you out.
Without communication there is no trust, therefore there won’t be any relationship as relationships are usually based on trust. People need to have trust so they can talk things out and say what’s on their mind for others to understand them. For example, if you are at a hospital because of an accident you would have to trust the doctor by communicating frequently to enable him to understand your situation. Having effective communication skills contributes to a healthy sense of self-esteem. When you have the correct tools to communicate your feelings and thoughts, you have the ability to express your feelings and be heard.Not being able to adequately express your emotions or ideas causes a low self-esteem because you keep your feelings in yourself.
This can cause feelings of depression and isolation. People with low self-esteem generally have less satisfying relationships and more social difficulties than people with a higher level of self-esteem. For example, someone who has a low self esteem would have more difficulties explaining and communicating their emotions to a councillor, it would take them more time than someone who has a good level of self esteem.Effective communication can help in providing appropriate support to meet the needs of service users by telling the service provider exactly what you need, like for example, from my work experience there were little children, and when the student needed to go to the toilet but couldn’t do it completely by themselves, they told me and I go with them to help them, or for example they need something they want to play with and I bring it to them as it is unreachable for them.I have learned that effective communication it’s essential in the health and social care sector for people to understand each other because this way they build trusting relationship and also it can help build the self-esteem of the service user and meet their needs.
This can help a lot later on in life as self-esteem can cause depression which can lead to isolation. It can also help by providing their service user with the right service for them and making sure they get the best help and advice to meet their needs.
