Therapeutic Communication

Therapeutic Communication

1. Common communication barriers in the medical arena.

Culture is one of the communication barriers that one is likely to encounter in the medical arena (Tamparo & Lindh, 2008). Culture is a collection of believes, values and practices, and is a vital determinant of an individual way of thinking. Culture can affect communication by affecting the way individual from background interpret information. A message that has a positive meaning in one culture may have a different interpretation in another. Personal attributes can also be a barrier to communication (Tamparo & Lindh, 2008). People have different personality. Some are open in sharing information while other love privacy. These personal attributes can be a barrier to therapeutic communication. Health literacy can also be a barrier to communication within the medical setting (Tamparo & Lindh, 2008). Low health literacy may hinder the patient from understanding medical terms.

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   Impact of communication barriers on delivery of care

Communication barriers can hinder medical practitioners from delivering quality care to patients. This is because communication is an essential part of healthcare delivery (Tamparo & Lindh, 2008). Practitioners need to communicate with the patient in order to take the patients’ medical history. Medical practitioners also need to communicate to the patients the result of diagnostic processes. The practitioners also need to communicate the medical interventions that can address the patient problem. These are essential steps in the delivery of care because practitioners need to get informed consent before administering intervention (Tamparo & Lindh, 2008). Practitioners also need to communicate prescriptions and instructions concerning future care. Communication barriers may hinder these therapeutic processes thus affecting the quality of care.

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   Steps for enhancing Diversity Acceptance   

Accepting and appreciating diversity is an essential requirement for enhancing therapeutic communication. The first step toward accepting other people’s uniqueness is to understand one self and the impacts of our individual attributes to communication (Tamparo & Lindh, 2008). Understanding how our values, perceptions and stereotypes affecting communication can enable us to accommodate other people. The next step is to understand other people’s cultures (Tamparo & Lindh, 2008). This will enable the practitioner to understand other people way of thinking and interpreting information. Understanding other people’s values will enable practitioners to be accommodative of other perspective of viewing things.

Topic II

1.      Medical assistants can ensure that the act professional regardless of what the patient may say or do by adhering to the professional code of ethics. The professional code of ethics provides a framework that can guide medical assistance to act in a professional manner (Tamparo & Lindh, 2008). This code contains principles that address various issues including privacy, autonomy and dignity of the patient.

2.       Trustworthiness is one principle of effective communication. Effective communication between medical practitioners and patients is founded on the sense of trust (Bradbury, 2012). Patient need to trust the doctor will listen to his problem and keep information confidential. Active listening is another principle of effective communication. The medical practitioner needs to focus of the patient’s response rather than fashioning his own response.

He should give the patient time to express himself. Communication should also be non-judgmental. Medical practitioners should not pass judgment on the patients based on the information they provide. Another essential principle of effective communication is value difference (Bradbury, 2012). This entail letting the communicating partner know that he is of value to the relationships. Patients need to feel that they are appreciated in order for them to communicate effectively. Eliminating assumption is also an essential principle of communication (Bradbury, 2012). The communicating party should not assume the meaning of a message if they do not have a clear understanding of what the sender intended to communicate.

References

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