Barriers to communication & Factors affecting the effectiveness of communication skills

Year 12 Health & Social Care

Lesson Objective

Gain knowledge & Understanding of Clients & Care settings

Communication can become blocked if individual differences are not understood. The three main ways that communication becomes blocked are:

A person cannot see, hear or receive the message.

A person cannot make sense of the message.

A person misunderstands the message.

Examples of the first kind of block, where people do not receive the communication, include visual disabilities, hearing disabilities, environmental problems such as poor lighting, noisy environments, and when speaking from too far away.

Key Concept
Barriers: effective communication depends on identifying barriers that may block understanding. Barriers can exist at a physical and sensory level, at the level of making sense of a message and at a cultural and social context level where the meaning of a message may be misunderstood.

Examples of situations in which people may not be able to make sense of the message include:
The use of different terms in language, such as jargon, slang, or dialect. Physical & intellectual disabilities, such as dysphasia, being ill, or suffering memory loss, or learning difficulty.
The use of different language, including Sign Language

Reasons for misunderstanding a message include:

Cultural influences different cultures interpret non-verbal and verbal messages, and humour in different ways Assumptions about people - about race, gender, disability and other groupings

Labelling or stereotyping of others

Social Context statements & behaviour that are understand by friends & family may not be understand by strangers

Reasons for misunderstanding a message include:

Emotional barriers a workers own emotional needs may stop them from wanting to know about others. Time pressures can mean that staff withdraw from wanting to know about others. Emotional differences can sometimes be interpreted as personal clashes, or personal difficulties. Very angry, or very happy, or very shy people may misinterpret communication from others

In order to minimise communication barriers it will be important to learn as much as possible about others. People may have preferred forms of interaction. This may include a reliance on non verbal messages, sign language, lip-reading, the use of description, slang phrases, choice of room or location for a conversation and so on. Everyone has communication needs of some kind.

Barriers to communication

Lack of common or shared language Use of unfamiliar technical or dialect words or phrases Differences in cultural beliefs and assumptions Prejudice on the part of client or practitioners Practitioners lack of confidence or experience Hostility between client and practitioner

Clients
Infants and young children People with specific learning difficulty People with sensory, speech or other communication impairments People with other disabilities People (including relatives) attending an accident and emergency unit People resident in a hospital ward People in consultation with a practitioner Elderly people

Audience / Care setting

Staff nurses from a hospital ward Young Mothers / Teenage Mothers Parents Teachers (secondary/primary) Care workers Social workers Special needs assistants Friends/relatives of ill patients Doctors Midwives Single parents

Introduction
This should give an overview of what your talk is going to be about. Who your audience will be, and why you have chosen to do this. It is also useful to include how you are planning to carry out your talk. What audio visual items you will include. How you are going to research etc.

Your talk should be about good practice in communication skills for one type of client in one care setting.

Your assessment
Your report should not be a shared exercise or based on a who group topic, but wholly your own work. Work which does not demonstrate independence cannot be awarded high marks.

The following sections must be included.

Introduction Transcript for the talk (annotated)

Copies of illustrated materials used (PowerPoint)

Feedback analysis (one copy of the feedback sheet) Graphical analysis broken down & explained for each question

The analysis should enable the reader to see which communication skills the audience judged to have been performed relatively well or badly. Evaluation (this should include justifications of the design decisions you made when planning your talk, your own evaluation, your evidence with references made to range of communication skills used and how it could be improved. Appendix ( Relevant support and source material including all completed anonymous feedback sheets) References to published and website sources that have been used

For Tomorrow
You must decide who your clients are and in what care setting. Tomorrow you will start your introduction, I will bring some examples of past work Before next Tuesday you need to gather some research about your area