Barriers to Communication

Within health and social care, there are several aspects of communication, we are going to be discussing two of them, Verbal and nonverbal;

*Verbal: this is when someone is speaking to another person, face-to-face or over the phone. Verbal communication also involves listening to a person; in any care setting, active listening is an important aspect of care. If a carer is active listening, they are not only responding to what is being said, they are also understanding, interpreting and evaluating what is being said.

*Non-verbal: this form of communication involves facial expressions, body language, proximity, eye contact and posture; these aspects of non-verbal communication are used to give messages or signals without the need of words. However, sometimes people interpret the signals or messages differently; therefore there can be some misunderstanding. Also, a carer has to take into account a person’s culture, as some hand gestures can be offensive in other cultures when they are not in our culture.

Barriers to communication

Language-

If a person is from another country and speaks another language this will create a barrier as they will have difficulty in understanding what is being said and may misinterpret important information about their health, this may lead to further health problems, the patient may also feel distressed about not being able to understand and this causes further health problems.

English may be a second or even third language for some people and may not be spoken or understood at all by others. If health and social care organisations only produce and display information in English and care workers only speak English, some people will find it very difficult to find and use the care services they need. Similarly, people from different cultural groups interpret non-verbal behaviour in different ways and may have a different sense of humour. This can lead to ‘messages’ being misunderstood by, or making no sense to, the person on the...