Unit 1: Promote communication in Health, Social Care or Children’s and Young People’s settings.

Effective communication is a key role in providing effective healthcare. After all, communication is needed to determine a client/patient’s concerns, to diagnose an illness, to explain the recommended treatment, to obtain consent for treatment, to explain aftercare, ect and when communication is ineffective, healthcare becomes ineffective
People communicate for so many different reasons. They may want to communicate to express their needs, share feelings, resolve problems, build relationships, social interactions, to find out information about the service user, ask questions, to reassure, share ideas, and many more.
Communication affects relationships in the work place by helping to build trust, helps understanding of individuals needs, can prevent or resolve conflict and prevent misunderstanding. All of this can help with colleagues, service user, services users’ family and friends, and anyone involved with the service user.
It’s important to find out wishes, preferences and language needs of individuals. Things like physical disabilities, additional learning needs, development of service user, home language, and preferred method. Also alternative methods of communication eg, British sign language, the use of signs/pictures/symbols/and writing, figure spelling, Braille, Makaton, human and technological aids to communication, communication passport, lip reading and prompted cards.
When promoting effective communication we must consider the way we communicate. We must read all care plans first to find out the preferred way the service users likes to communicate. Types of communication like formal, non-formal, sensitive and complex. Stages of the communication cycle, ideas, occur, message code, message sent, message received, message understood. We could always have one-to-one groups with people using the service, people involved with the service user, with professionals/colleagues to find out more effective ways of communication and the best way of communication for the service user. The purpose of communication is need to adapt communication, culture factors, time and resources available and environment.
There are loads of different communication methods:
Verbal: vocabulary, linguistic tone, pitch and pace. Singing, symbols, touch, music and drama, objects of reference, technological aids of communication. Non-verbal: eye contact, touch, gestures, body language and behaviour. Ways of responding to reactions when they’re verbal are tones, pitch, and silence. Non-verbal, body language, eye contact, touch, emotional state, facial expressions, signs that information has been understood by the service user.
Communication can be different when using it with people from different backgrounds. Communication can be interpreted in different ways by different people. They may not understand because they’re not English, not from this country, they may just not understand you or the way you communicate.
Different people from different back grounds may use verbal communication to express what they want, or they could use non-verbal communication to put their point across. People from different backgrounds can communicate the way they know best. They could use facial expressions or body language to express their needs or what they want to do in the workplace.
Different people from different backgrounds can cause misunderstanding when using communication. However they will be able to communicate using hand gestures, facial expressions or maybe body language. Basic healthcare principles apply to all clients/patients regardless of their background, healthcare providers still make assumptions based on their own background/culture. These assumptions could not apply to the clients/patients background/culture. Listening is a big part of communication but if you don’t apply that with understanding then it could lead to conflict, mistakes