Critical discussion of verbal and non-verbal communication Essay

Critical discussion of verbal and non-verbal communication - Essay Example Poor communication constantly occurs in hospitals and is believed to be responsible for a majority of hospitals treatment errors that cause death to many patients (Harrison and Hart, 2006). These communication breakdowns are likely to occur at specific points especially when breaking news to patients regarding their health, when doctors are being informed by nurses about patients’ health, when there is a medical emergency that requires quick treatment and during diagnosis and prescription of treatment. Various reasons have been found to lead to these lapses of communication that leads to wrong diagnosis and treatment as well as patients not being informed of their condition properly (Shives, 2008). Poor communication in hospitals has occurred frequently due to a lack of proper hospital policy in place to ensure that there is a basic protocol followed in the general treatment, resulting to nurses using different methods of treating. These errors could occur during discharge pro cedures as well as the report methods used during admission of emergency cases (Minott, 2008), as both nurses and doctors use different standards of measurement in report filling, making prescriptions and document handling, errors of interpretation are likely to occur. ... Hence, a mental model framework is imperative for the comprehension of verbal and non-verbal cues as well as for staff to share meaning and be able to develop common knowledge (Davidson and Blackman, n.d.). Lack of rules for face-to-face or any other verbal communication such as via telephone could also result in communication barriers forming during treatment especially while changing shifts. Different patients will respond differently to the rapport used by medical staff and although it is difficult to find a universal tone of conversation to use in conversation, it must be noted that it can result in patience feeling uncomfortable communicating as well as shutting down due to a feeling of disrespect or prying by the doctor. The use of vague language and unclear syntactic and pragmatics will also result in the misdiagnosis of patients and the inability of fellow staff members comprehending the sincerity of the patients’ illness (Byrne and Byrne 1992; Morrissey and Callaghan, 2011). A differing opinion on what is necessary and what is not is a serious impediment to effective communication between both patient-staff and staff-staff briefing. This is because different opinions have often led to scenarios where vital patient information about welfare is left out as either the patient or the nurses available feel that it is not necessary to explain some details especially if the affected area is very private or if it appears that they are healing and do not want to seem petty. This is more common during oral communication and emergency treatments than when viewing their chart files as different people will have various thoughts on what is important and what is not and information can be forgotten or left out. Infrequent communication by