Explain the role of effective communication and interpersonal interaction in health and social care context. Communication is the process of passing information, ideas from one person to another. Interpersonal interaction is face-to-face communication and occurs when people exchange information, their feelings, ideas, etc. , through verbal and non-verbal messages. Professionals in care and social care should have good communication skills, because they are constantly in touch with their patients or users’ services, so they have to make the patients feel comfortable and sure to share what is going wrong with them or anything.

As well, they communicate everyday with colleagues or staff from the health centre, so all professionals should know the right way to pass a message. For example, if a doctor wants to talk to another one, he will use medical jargon. Contexts of communication: One-to-one communication: This type of communication occurs when two people share their ideas by speaking or writing. In health and social care, a clear example can be in a doctor-patient appointment, where the patient will have to explain to the doctor health issues or another kind of concerns.

Group communication: It occurs between more than only one person, so in this context of communication, it will probably be more complex than in one-to-one communication because in a group everybody wants to be listened and sometimes not everybody agrees with different points of view. This context can take place in the health centre when every morning the manager holds a meeting with all the staff. Formal communication: This happens when somebody speaks or writes in an official way because they are representing an organisation or wants to communicate with the organisation.

The communication will be formal when we use ‘Good morning, we are so and so’ or beginning a letter with ‘Dear Sir or Madam’. This happens when a patient call to the health centre to book an appointment and the receptionist will answer like ‘Good morning, Park View Health Centre, how may I help you? ’. Informal communication: It’s more personal than formal communication, people usually use this context of communication when they write or speak to their family, friends or relatives. This doesn’t mean that informal communication should be any less respectful or that it is necessarily less effective than formal communication.

This can happen when two colleagues are having a relaxed chat about what they did on the weekend. Communication between colleagues: Health and social care professionals communicate with colleagues every day, and it can be in a formal or informal way. They communicate in one-to-one or group contexts. In the health centre, when two doctors discuss the diagnostics about a patient, each one shares knowledge, treatments, etc. Communication between professionals and service users: Professionals communicate with service users and other professionals in a variety of ways.

When it comes to communication with service users, professionals have to make sure that they don’t use technical language or medical jargon. This occurs when a nurse or doctor is having a chat in the corridor with a patient about how is everything going. Communication with other professionals: Health and social care is based in multi-professional and multi-agency working. What we need to understand about this context is that professionals need to be able to communicate effectively with professionals from another care discipline. Forms of communication:

Verbal communication: This is a word-based communication, care professionals frequently use verbal communication that can be spoken or written, to communicate with colleagues or patients so they have to make sure that they are doing it in the right way. Both, professionals and patients should have speaking and listening skills, the tone of voice should be the correct as well, both should ask and answer questions. Non-verbal communication: This type of communication involves proximity, facial expressions, gestures, eye contact, and use of signs, symbols and pictures.

Nurses or doctors use non-verbal communicate when it comes to eye contact or proximity. For example when the midwife is checking over the mother and should feel her belly. Written communication: It only makes use of written words, so this includes prescriptions that the doctors give to the patients or letters and reports that the receptionists of the health centre send to the service users. Technological aids: It’s the same as written communication, it uses words, so this can happen when the receptionist keep reminding the patients about appointments or medication they should take via texts and emails.

Alternative forms of communication: Involves sign language, lip reading, Makaton, braille, human aids, among others. If the health centre provides human aids or technological aids to people with medical or another kind of problems like deafness, selective mutism, people who don’t speak English, that will benefit the patients because they will feel more comfortable to connect with the doctor, and in this way there won’t be misunderstandings, misdiagnosis or poor treatment.

For example, if a patient who speaks Spanish is having a health issue and goes to the health centre and there aren’t translators or someone who can actually help her, she will not be able to have an appointment and be treated.

Theories of communication. Argyle’s stages of communication cycle: In this cycle there are six main stages: An idea occurs. A patient arrives to the appointment with his doctor, so he wants to explain all the symptoms that he has been experimenting during the week.

A message is coded. The patient chooses the best way to communicate what’s going on with his health, which is verbal communication (speech). A message is sent. The patient sends the message in the way that he chose. The message is received. The doctor receives the message and has to react to it. The message is decoded. The doctor has to interpret the message using his knowledge. The message is understood. The doctor has understood the information that the patient sent in the message.

The receiver of the message keeps the communication going by responding to or by giving feedback to the original message. The doctor will be able to give an answer to the patient, asking some other things that he needs to know to give a diagnosis and treatment. This process then repeats and builds into a communication cycle. Tuckman’s stages of group interaction: Forming: Involves group members meeting for the first time and asking basic questions about the purpose of the group. Some of the members will be anxious or excited about the role they have to play.

In this stage a leader appears to make things clearer. Storming: This can be the hardest stage, as the members would start complaining about the purpose of the group, the work that they have to perform, resistance to the authority and role of the leader and another kind of things. The co-operation will be essential to overcome this stage. Norming: In this stage the people will star to resolve their conflicts and differences, and respect the role and authority of the leader. The group will share and agree with the values and norms of behaviour.

Performing: The group members will focus on reaching the team’s goal without friction or disagreements. For example, professionals can use these stages in staff meetings, where the manager of the health centre would be the leader and who controls the group. They have to recognize the goal that they want to achieve and to do that they will have to overcome all the stages. Of course there will be disagreements between colleagues and all the staff of the health centre but if they co-operate all together and accept the different ideas that have been shared they will achieve the team’s goal.

Task 3: Assess the role of effective communication and interpersonal interaction in health and social care with reference to theories of communication. Theories of communication provide us with ways of analysing communication between people and give health professionals knowledge about why effectively communication is a key factor in the job they are preforming. Effective communication in Argyle’s communication cycle involves a two-way process in which each person shares ideas, feelings and plans, understands and gives feedback about the topic.

So this cycle would be more personal when it comes to the care professional and the patient, they can decide the form of communication they want to use, this is important because it’s essential for the patient to be able to connect with the doctor. If the patient is able to connect with the professional it would be easier to give diagnosis and treatments, and if the patients feel that the carer is concerned and will support them the will show satisfaction about the service provided and the trust builds up.

In other hand we have the Tuckman’s stages of group interaction, as its name says it occurs with groups, may be this will be effective but it will be more complicated for the patients to connect with the health professional. In my opinion I would say that one-to-one communication is more effective when we talk about providing health and care services to other people, if professionals use the proper aid in benefit of the patient it would be better.

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