Review of communication used (E1 & 2)

Before I went to the residential home, I planned a few questions to ask. They were rather general, about her life and history, without being too intrusive or personal. When I arrived at the nursing home, I was introduced to Betty, an eighty three year old woman who suffers from short term memory loss. I said “hi” and gave a friendly smile. She returned the smile but blocked eye contact by looking away. I sat down on a buffet in front of her but slightly to the left so that it made it less intense and formal. First of all I asked how she liked the residential home, she did not understand what I was asking so I changed the question to a sim

If there were three things in which I would hope to improve in, I would say

1) Listen to people telling me about personal issues and use reflective listening to show that I care

Language was a bit of a problem because I found myself using words which Betty could not relate to. After the first time I said something that she could not understand, I realised that I had to use words specifically for her. It was quite hard at times to try to find a word which she would know just because of the time difference between us.

2) Be slightly more focused on Betty rather than the things going on in the room at the same time.

The main thing which inhibited the communication was the fact that Grace was interfering with what Betty wanted to do. I should have straight away asked the staff if there was somewhere else that we could sit, away from Grace and away from the television noise. At the time, I did not want to be too much of a burden on the staff but now I see it would have helped a great deal.

Although I struggled in the situation to keep the conversation going because of certain distractions, I think my personal communication skills where quite good. My main aim was to make sure that Betty was comfortable about talking to me. To do this, I smiled appropriately, wore suitable clothing, gave a comfortable amount of eye contact and talked in a chatty and friendly way. I think this helped a lot because it would have been easy to make the conversation seem uneasy if I had acted in a different way.

Some topics in this essay:
, Betty Grace, Evaluation A1, C1 A1, Betty Betty, reflective listening, eye contact, tone voice, residential home, communication skills, Grace Effectiveness, hand gestures, personal communication skills, term memory loss, voice conversation, home betty, grace sit, brothers sisters, using hand gestures, short term memory, tone voice conversation,