Health and Social Care - Literature review Example

Health and Social Care Name Institution Date Introduction Health and social care is a large sector that is undergoing rapid change with current government initiatives, offering it a higher outline than ever. The groundwork entailed in attaining the willingness to listen is an inward procedure started by health practitioners such as nurses as they organize themselves and environment. However, Willingness alone is not enough for efficient listening because two-way talk with a patient is lacking. It is therefore important for health practitioners to utilize the skills of learning for effective listening. New Health practitioners can perfectly develop their skills of learning by developing the five areas of listening skills. The five areas of listening skills incorporate attending, observing, perceiving, interpreting and recalling. The manner in which health practitioners attend is very important in determines their degree of listening skills. Their observation skills are also important in determining the development of listening skills. the essay therefore covers how new health practitioners can develop their skills of listening, that is, how they can improve on attending, observing, perceiving, interpreting and recalling skills (Stein-Parbury, 2009). How new health practitioners can develop their skills of listening The skills of learning are divided into five areas, which are, attending, observing, perceiving, interpreting and recalling. These areas, if effectively applied will highly develop the learning skills of new health practitioners. Attending Attending is part of skills of learning, and is an outward, physical display of willingness of health practitioners to listen. When Attending skills are applied patients normally get the message that health practitioners such as nurses are often willing to listen and available to interact. Patients can view the practice as important when health providers offer their time by availing themselves to patients and relating their attending skills with valuable communication. The attending information can be passed via body posture, non-verbal channels and eye contact. For instance, a health practitioner who checks the patient’s healthcare records for current documentation, as he or she tries to listen, is not doing his or her intent fully because he or she is not demonstrating attending skills to patient (Schuster& Nykolyn, 2010). For a new health practitioner to develop his or her attending skills, he or she needs to squarely face a person in a front-on presentation. He or she should use an open posture that is, demonstrating openness and acceptance to other persons. McHugh Schuster and Nykolyn (2010) note that as a way of displaying active interest when serving patients, health practitioners need to know how to lean forward. New health practitioners also need to ensure that direct eye contact with their patients is maintained, that is, the health practitioners need to be at similar eye level with patients. The practitioners need to be in a relaxed position when serving patients. They also need to know that the attending strength is not always appropriate. Patients At times usually talk about matters that do not require attending strength. This therefore makes it awkward and inappropriate for health practitioners to presume posture. The guideline of attending that relates to eye contact maintenance is an area that usually presents several complexities. Caution therefore should be exercised by health practitioners when employing the guideline. Steady eye contact is unnatural, uncomfortable and even frightening because it usually develops uneasiness. Health practitioners therefore need to know this when applying attending skills. It is also important for health practitioner to know that uneven breaks in eye contact are natural and pleasing in maintaining relieve and ease during interaction. Health practitioners also need to understand that attending position that bases on eye contact as its major aspects might not be appropriate in many cultures. When cultural norms about status prevail, maintaining eye contact might be viewed as a sign of lack of respect (Higgs and Jones, 2000). When the cultural norms are in operation, persons with higher status are not permitted to be looked directly in their eyes. Eye contact might also vary with gender and age. For health practitioners to encourage interaction via attending behavior, they need to be sensitive on how patients are responding to their efforts. A huge part of this feeling is attentiveness of age-related and cultural differences. For example, in some cultures it is believed that looking a person in power directly in the eye is bad. Health practitioners should position themselves physically in such a way that they maintain a relaxed stance and establish eye contact close enough to relate in a helpful manner thus sustaining relieve (McHugh Schuster & Nykolyn, 2010). Interpreting Interpreting development is an important aspect in developing the listening skills of new health practitioner. Understanding the story of a patient requires the skills of interpretation. This is often tentative at the beginning and needs to be confirmed with patients. When health providers have finished to listening and tried to understand the patient’s story, they need to be capable of interpreting the theme of patient’s story. To achieve this, they need to know how to clarify and explore their current understanding. Understanding is very important since it displays the accurate meaning of what the patient has said and thus can be applied to feed back the essence of the talk in snippets. According to Stein-Parbury (2009), health providers should be trained on how to develop their interpreting skills. For health providers to develop trust and understand the cultural backgrounds of patients, they need to enhance their interpreting skills. They should also ensure that they offer work that is of high standard. This will enables health providers to enhance their interpreting skills past ability to speak many languages. Health providers should also work in a team to ensure good communication that encourages better understanding of health care requirements of various local communities. Constant listening and recognition of subjects allows health providers to attain a sense of awareness with experiences of ordinary patient. Interpreting a theme of a story is an important learning experience in recognizing patients’ stories. Observing As away of developing listening skills, health practitioners need also to improve on observing as an area of skills of listening. Efficient listening incorporates smart observation of patient. A huge part of listening is not only concentrating on what is expressed but also on how it is expressed. During listening, health practitioners need to have good chance of observing the non-verbal features of expressions of patient. Subtle and common cues about experience of patients can be understood better when health practitioners perceive the non-verbal behavior of patient. Feelings are always expressed mostly via facial expression, body posture, eye contact, movements and other behaviors that are non-verbal (Glasby & Littlechild, 2004). Health practitioners need to be capable of noticing signals first. The noticing of signals and their primary interpretation normally occurs within the context of listening. It is also significant for health practitioners to expand and maintain the degree of heightened perceptual understanding when relating with patients. Schuster and Nykolyn (2010) argue that heightened perceptual understanding allows health practitioners to be smarter in their observations. This makes them to notice the manner in which a patient is conveying information. Redsell and Hastings (2010) note that observing a non-verbal signal of patients is important within the context of listening. The signals need to be validated very well by the patient as to their right meaning since listening allows health practitioners to observe them, but not essentially to understand them accurately. When health practitioners are listening to patients it is essential for them to recognize the use of pronouns when referring directly to patients. By doing this, they will be able to relate information that concerns them, not another person. Perceptive health practitioners, who are in tune with expressions of patients, can notice the use of language and fully understand the subjects of patient’s stories (Stein-Parbury, 1993). Perceiving Perceiving, an area of skills of listening, is another area that needs to be developed by health practitioners to improve on their listening skills. So far attending demonstrates interest of health practitioners in listening to the patient and observing allows health practitioners to notice non-verbal signals that are presented by patients. Coles and Porter (2008) say that patients are currently encouraged and free to provide their story to an energetically interested health practitioner, and the health practitioner need to be in position to receive information of the patient. There are several facets to stories of patients, incorporating the factual content of the story, the associated feelings and the overall subject of the story. Each facets normally comes together to develop patient’s picture, that is, the whole story (Nolan, 2005). Through out the entire listening process, new health practitioners need to ensure that they receive the whole story since understanding of various facets of information normally guides them. When health practitioners are listening they normally tend to make suppositions about what the patient is talking about. At times, the suppositions are accepted and even worked on as if they were truth. It is therefore essential for health practitioners to keep this tendency under check and understand that more interaction is important to validate the primary assumptions thus by doing this new health practitioners will find themselves developing skills of listening. When listening, the health practitioner needs to perceive the feeling facet of the story of patient, the emotional response and subjective reactions that go with the content. Patients always have strong emotional responses to the status of their health and healthcare, and the significance of emotions in dealing with demands such as those developed by health events. When listening to feelings it is important for health practitioners defer their personal judgments concerning what is suitable and acceptable (Higgs and Jones, 2000). Naturally feelings are often unreasonable, hard and illogical to manage. For health practitioners to be unbiased to patients’ feelings opinion, they need to believe that feelings are acceptable. Unbiased feeling information’s view usually imposes difficulties to health practitioners. According to Mason and Horne (2004), the difficulties are often brought about by the natural tendency of judging the health providers and the manner in which these difficulties are indirectly expressed. Feelings can be expressed indirectly via verbal means. Therefore a sensitive health practitioner needs to be capable of noticing them. For Health practitioners to maintain tendency in check, they need to depend most on their emotional intellect and self-awareness. Recalling Recalling what the patient has said is the greatest challenge in listening. Therefore, to ensure that effective understanding is occurring, health providers need to ensure that they recall accurately. Themes can only become clear after some associations with patients. Health providers need to rely most on their recalling ability. Recalling patients’ stories requires a lot of concentration. In case for instance, a health provider finds himself questioning a patient to restate his or her story several times, the patient might not be confident with the health provider. The patient might assume that the health provider is not keen to his or her story. Patients are always relaxed when they learn that health providers listen keenly to their stories and recall well what they have said (Wolvin, 2009). Conclusion From the discussion, it is evident that health practitioners such as nurses can improve on their skills of listening by developing their attending, observing, perceiving, interpreting and recalling skills. Attending is a physical demonstration of willingness of health practitioner to listen. By displaying attending behavior a health practitioner or nurse is just trying to communicate to patients that he or she is always ready to listen and is available to interact. As away of developing attending skills, health practitioners need to use open posture, to learn how to lean forward when serving patients, to maintain direct eye contact with their patients, to be in a relaxed position and bear in mind that the intensity of attending is not always suitable. As away of developing observing skills, health practitioners need have a good chance of viewing the non-verbal aspects of expressions of patients during listening. Subtle and common signals about experience of patients can be understood better when nurses perceive the non-verbal behavior of patient. Through out the entire listening process, new health practitioners need to ensure that they receive the whole story since understanding of various facets of information normally guides them. When health care providers such as nurses have finished listening to and attempted to know the patient’s story, they need to be capable of interpreting the theme of patient’s story. References Stein-Parbury, J. (2009). Patient & Person: Interpersonal Skills in Nursing. New York: Elsevier Health Sciences. Schuster, M. P. & Nykolyn L. (2010). Communication for Nurses: How to Prevent Harmful Events and Promote Patient Safety. New York: F.A. Davis Co. McHugh Schuster P. & Nykolyn L. (2010). Communication for Nurses: How to Prevent Harmful Events and Promote Patient Safety. NY: F.A. Davis Co. Stein-Parbury, J. (1993). Patient and person: developing interpersonal skills in nursing. New York: Churchill Livingstone. Higgs J. & Jones A. M. (2000). Clinical reasoning in the health professions. New York: Elsevier Health Sciences. Coles L. & Porter E. (2008). Public health skills: a practical guide for nurses and public health practitioners. New York: John Wiley and Sons. Redsell S. & Hastings A. (2010). Listening to Children and Young People in Healthcare Consultations. London: Radcliffe Publishing. Nolan Y. (2005). Health and social care: S/NVQ level 2. London: Heinemann. Glasby J. & Littlechild R. (2004).The health and social care divide: the experiences of older people. New York: The Policy Press. Mason L. & Horne S. (2004). BTEC Introduction to Health and Social Care. London: Heinemann. Wolvin D. A. (2009). Listening and Human Communication in the 21st Century. New York: John Wiley and Sons. Read More