What is communication in health and social care?
Healthcare workers use communication skills to provide emotional support to patients, protect patients' privacy, and teach new workers how to provide care. The quality of communication in health and social care is crucial because it affects the quality of care that patients receive.
Examples of health and social care settings where effective communication is necessary include hospitals, GP surgeries, dentists, nursing homes and social care support centres.
When health and social care workers communicate well with each other, and with their patients and their families, patients feel more comfortable and supported. As you probably already know, people should have control over their own care and how it is delivered, in so far as they are able to.
Examples of health and social care communication methods
There are many effective communication methods in health and social care. These include verbal, non-verbal, written and visual communication:
1. Verbal communication
This is the most common form of communication and involves communicating through speech. It is important to use clear and concise language when communicating verbally, and to make sure that you are speaking at a pace that the other person can understand.
2. Non-verbal communication
This includes communication that is not verbal, such as body language, facial expressions and gestures. It is important to be aware of your own non-verbal communication, as well as the non-verbal communication of others, in order to effectively communicate.
3. Written communication
This includes communication that is written, such as emails, letters and reports. It is important to use clear and concise language when writing, and to make sure that you are using proper grammar and punctuation.
4. Visual communication
This includes communication that is presented visually, such as charts, graphs and diagrams. It is important to use clear and concise visuals when communicating, and to make sure that the visuals are easy to understand.
Why is communication important in health and social care settings?
Help them feel in control
As you can expect once people enter the care system, they can feel like they’ve lost control of their lives. Simple things they took for granted become harder, day to day tasks might be dictated by a nurse or carer. Having good communication can avoid the person feeling like this, creating the opening to use their voice more and have their say on their care service.
As you probably already know, people should have control over their own care and how it is delivered, in so far as they are able to. They should receive person-centred care. Even if your organisation is rightly giving people that control, poor communication skills can make them think the opposite and undermine your person-focused approach.
Ease their anxiety
Being anxious or having depression in care homes has become more prevalent. A report from the independent Mental Health Taskforce to the NHS in England stated that “40% of older people living in care homes are affected by depression”. Finding out about tests and treatment you’ll need, not seeing your family as often and the fear of the unknown are some factors that affect the way the patient feels.
Communication is key in this instance, these problems for the resident can often lead to out of character moments, aggressive or anti-social behaviour, or self-isolation. It’s important to notice if characteristics that highlight anxiety issues are present. Does the person often feel nervous, are they breathing quicker, or have they had a panic attack?
Good communication is important to keep the person calm. Care workers must assist at the person's pace, let the patient talk and choose their words carefully to reduce these anxieties and build up their confidence.
Save money and avoid errors
It’s not always about patients either, in a healthcare environment communicating effectively with colleagues and co-workers is important. Poor communication skills can lead to errors such as mistakes on tests and prescribing and administering the wrong medicines.
Research by the Nursing Times, the UK’s leading healthcare magazine tells us that these mistakes cost approximately £1 billion per year. Learning to communicate effectively with colleagues should be a top priority for a care business.
What communication skills does a care worker need?
Care workers need a select set of skills to be successful when communicating. These develop during their time in care, but must always be present in their role. Some examples include:
Verbal communication
Care workers must be able to communicate verbally to respond to questions, find out about patients' problems or needs, and draw out all the information they need from a service user as they can come across barriers.
Examples of verbal communication in health and social care include:
- Discussing a treatment plan with a patient
- Giving instructions to a care worker
- Communicating with a colleague about a client
- Discussing a problem with a supervisor
- Participating in team meetings and group discussions
Active listening
Active listening is a key communication skill that is taught to health and social care professionals. It is the process of fully attending to another person, using both nonverbal and verbal cues, in order to check to understand the patient. This requires the healthcare worker to focus entirely on the speaker. Good active listening skills can help to build trust and rapport, resolve conflict, and improve overall communication.
Non-verbal communication
Using non-verbal communication is key. There may be times the service user struggles verbally. Understanding their requirements without the need to be verbal and making sure they understand is important for their treatment.
Considering cultural differences
Understand cultural differences and how they might impact communication.
These skills should come naturally to a care worker as along with their core English, number and general employee skills, they need to have natural empathy and be a ‘people person' which is something a lot of residents require in their day-to-day lives in care.
Promoting effective communication in health and social care
Communication goes two ways. Giving and receiving messages requires consideration of both the carer and service user to make it effective.
The Cycle of Communication (below) is key to this and is the process of the sending, receiving and decoding of messages. Now, this does not mean you are going to have to start learning Morse Code. The Cycle is totally applicable to the kind of verbal communication that is going on all the time in care, especially with people who may have diminished communication skills, dementia, or difficulty expressing themselves.
Argyle’s communication cycle
This theory of effective communication was first developed by Charles Berner in 1965 and is when someone decides to communicate. The process involves taking action (message sent), which is then received by the other person (message received). This person then works out the meaning (message decoded) and lets the other person know they have understood (feedback). The feedback is the response to the message and then the whole cycle may start again.
There are various factors to consider when promoting communication between service users and workers.
In a care setting, it’s important to think about the needs of the service user, since this is the core part of the care workers’ job role. Not all service users are the same, so the purpose of the communication is to establish what the individual requires.
Barriers to effective communication in health and social care
Studies have shown that barriers to communication can arise due to lack of time and staff resourcing, resource scarcity and increased bureaucracy, making it difficult for healthcare staff to deliver good communication practices. It's important to be aware of these whenever planning, delivering or assessing care.
Below are some of the key barriers to communication in health and social care and how you and your teams can overcome them.
Attitudes, emotions, patience
It may seem obvious, but our approach and attitude to service users can create barriers. Wherever it is letting frustrations come across to service users, or not treating them in a caring way, it may prevent them from telling us how they feel and voicing concerns.
Language barriers
Ensure that any carer visiting a person has the necessary language skills. For example, if the service user’s first language is not English and they don’t speak English well, someone who speaks their native tongue may find communication easier and elicit more detailed, open responses.
Physical and mental health conditions and disabilities
Conditions common in the elderly, such as dementia, Alzheimer’s, or the impact of a stroke can all affect a person’s ability to communicate their needs, and feelings and to think clearly. Obviously, if a person’s memory is impacted we need to remember they will not remember something we have discussed previously.
This is where effective communication becomes so vital. By mastering effective, empathetic communication we can help assure a person who is confused and often fearful as a result. By maintaining patience and understanding of how their condition feels, we can reduce distress, enabling them to relax and be more open. By learning more about conditions like dementia we can adopt approaches to help them improve, or at least communicate their thoughts, feelings and fears more easily.
Now the more obvious. Hearing loss is also relatively common in the elderly, remembering this, ensuring hearing aids are used where a person has them or increasing your volume without getting angry (sometimes more difficult than it might seem!) is important. Also, remember you may need to speak more slowly, enunciate, and sometimes enable a person to use other cues such as reading your lips or body language. If a person is deaf and knows British Sign Language you may also want to learn some basics, it can make a big difference and break down lots of barriers, not just communication barriers.
Learning disabilities can often impact a person’s ability to communicate, in these instances it is essential to identify what ways these difficulties can manifest and what techniques/approaches can be used to make communication more effective.
Other factors
Factors in the home or care setting can also have an impact. From loud televisions, poor lighting background noise, distractions and during the pandemic our masks can all impact our ability to communicate effectively in care. Even if a person is uncomfortable, too hot or cold they may be distracted or feel less relaxed and less communicative.
The impact of barriers to communication in health and social care
Barriers to communication in care can reduce the quality of the care service for people and make them less open and honest. In turn, this can be reflected in your inspection by regulatory bodies.
More importantly, barriers to communication can also mean we miss out on opportunities to notice a deterioration of a person’s health and well-being, or to improve the care service for the person, in little or big ways, all of which can make a significant difference to care quality.
Why is clear speech important in health and social care?
If a person feels they can’t hear or communicate, or worse, are not being listened to, it can further a sense of disempowerment that we all don’t want to see in people who may have already lost a significant amount of autonomy or quality of life. An open, honest, communicative, listening care service is usually a better care service.
Overcoming barriers to communication in health and social care
Communication barriers are common across all social care, for example, if the person has dementia, autism or hearing impairment. It’s important to adapt to these similarly to the way we spoke about dealing with anxiety earlier.
For example, when communicating with someone with dementia in a care setting, it is important to:
- Speak at a slower pace, allowing plenty of time for response.
- Don’t speak as if the person isn’t in the room, or like a child.
- Ask questions one at a time and don’t make them complicated.
- Avoid asking direct questions. Someone with dementia could become frustrated if they can’t find the answer.
Although a lot of these barriers are transferable between conditions, preparation is the key to success. Care workers need to be ready for any problems that may arise with poor communication, so they can deal with them effectively and in the best way for the resident.
Always focus on the person you are talking to. Give them lots of opportunities to communicate, use prompts that might make them feel more open to raising any concerns or preferences and always treat them as the unique, fully-rounded person that they are.
Although a lot of these barriers are transferable between conditions, preparation is the key to success. Care workers need to be ready for any problems that may arise with poor communication, so they can deal with it effectively and in the best way for the resident.
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