Communication at Workplace for Physicians - myassignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about theCommunication at Workplace for Physicians. Answer: Introduction: The interview has been taken with the main purpose of analyzing the effectiveness of the interpersonal communication style followed in an organization. The respondent of the interview is the Manager of Health Plus, one of the most renowned healthcare service providing organizations of Australia. Established in the year of 2005, the emerging company has been able to gain much recognition and has emerged to be one of the largest revenue earning companies of Australia. As a Manager of the organization, Lisa Smith spoke of the importance of coordination in the healthcare organization, as the joint labor of the physicians, nurses and healthcare experts can only bring in patient satisfaction, and yet some of the common challenges frequently encountered by her in terms of interpersonal communication, has been recorded as well. Discussion: A face to face interview has been conducted with the Manager of Health Plus, who has been called over the phone prior to the interview and has been asked for participating in an interview for academic research purpose. Although initially Lisa Smith said that she had a busy schedule, I persuaded her by assuring her that the research would not take a long time, and that her response would help in future research projects. According to the Rationality Model of Persuasion, each individual has a specific set of belief in compliance of which he or she acts. However, in order to persuade the individual, one has to refer to the values and ideals and align the same with the purpose of the proposed action (Knapp et al. 2014). Similarly, although Lisa Smith was initially reluctant to sit for an interview, realizing the fact that working in a healthcare industry, her aim must be to serve humanity, I told her that she can serve people by contributing to the research knowledge (Lane 2016). Consequ ently, she got convinced to participate in the interview. Since the interview was being conducted by meeting the respondent in person, it was easy to understand and interpret the responses of the interview by her body language and gestures. Besides, based on the response of the interview, the questions could be adapted as per needs of the study. It is important to note here, that since the interviewee belonged to the Australian culture, and I myself was from a different ethnic group, I had to be mindful of the cultural gaps, while communicating with Lisa. It should be noted that Hofstede had already spoken about how each individual belonging to a different cultural group, would have a different set of cultural values and ideals, for which special care has to be take care of while speaking to a person of different origin (Arroyo and Harwood 2014). The Australian style of communication is primarily direct, logical and straightforward, and that hence while interviewing Lisa, a very suc cinct introduction was being followed by a series of research specific questions (Betancourt et al. 2016). After analyzing the interview response, it has become clear that one of the major challenges encountered at Health Plus, is that the communication at healthcare industry requires proper patience and coordination in order to improve the experience of the patients. Each of the staffs need to be trained so that they can treat the patients with sufficient care. Team role and coordination also play an equally important role (Berger 2014). According to Lisa, the medical staffs working at her organization would often work on their own, or would not refer to other physicians and nurses, and end up treating the patient in an unsatisfactory way. Many patients require multi disciplinary approach such as those suffering from cardiovascular diseases, and the there needs to be proper coordination among the medical staffs, such as the cardiologist, general physician, nurse and the physiotherapist, which is often found missing in the organization. Further, after interviewing the Manager of Health Pl us, it becomes clear that the Manager follows an aggressive communication style whereby she believes in exercising her authority and terrifying her workers, rather than trying to communicate the problem. In this context, it is important to state that the leader of an organization should employ the use of an Assertive communication style, interact with all the working staffs, explain the mission and objectives of the organization, and ask them to work in accordance with the workplace communication framework. In the process, the Manager must also attentively listen to the problems, as encountered by the working staffs, while communicating with each other, rather than merely dictating them what to do (Wood 2015). According to the Interactive or Convergence Model of Communication, any form of communication is a two-way process that not only involves the sender encoding the message, but the listener receiving, decoding and encoding a new message (Vries et al. 2013). Listening to the feed back of the audience is equally important, as it can help in effective interpersonal communication. However, one major problem at Health Plus is that not only there is an absence of coordination among the staffs but at the same time, the communication style followed by Lisa is highly aggressive. The organizational protocols are not communicated periodically to the workers, and yet in case of violation of these protocols, they are being warned that they can be terminated at any time. However, the listening skills of the Manager in handling customer complaints and grievances are admirable. Instead of relying completely on what a patient is complaining about and taking actions based on that, Lisa calls the responsible physician or nurse against whom the accusation charge has been leveled, and asks for clarification (Fussell and Kruez 2014). Only if the person is found to be responsible for the situation, only then does she take serious step. Recommendation and Conclusion: It is important to offer feasible solutions to the problems of interpersonal communication encountered by the working staffs at Health Plus Australia. First of all, the Manager has to enroll herself in a professional training course that will develop her understanding of the communication style adopted by the successful leaders across the globe. She needs to replace her Aggressive communication style by the Assertive style. She needs to be more poised, while communicating with her employees, or while trying to ensure consumer satisfaction, she would end up end up disappointing the employees, resulting in higher turnover rates. Again, it is also recommended that the Manager along with other senior managers conduct business meetings at least once a week, communicating the importance of effective communication at workplace, and politely reminding the employees of the consequence of the violation of the same. In case the mission, goals and values of the organization are regularly communi cated to the employees, they will realize the importance of coordination, team work and patience in communicating with the clients. Further, the healthcare staffs can be trained by arranging seminars and asking them to enroll in a variety of training courses that can enhance their interpersonal communication skills. It is equally important to note that often patients come from different cultural backgrounds, and hence it is important to understand the cultural values and sentiments of each patient. This is the reason why cross-cultural training should also be provided to the staffs. Reference List: Arroyo, A. and Harwood, J., 2014. Theorizing fat talk: Intrapersonal, interpersonal, and intergroup communication about groups.Annals of the International Communication Association,38(1), pp.175-205. Berger, C.R. ed., 2014.Interpersonal communication(Vol. 6). Walter de Gruyter GmbH Co KG. Betancourt, J.R., Green, A.R., Carrillo, J.E. and Owusu Ananeh-Firempong, I.I., 2016. Defining cultural competence: a practical framework for addressing racial/ethnic disparities in health and health care.Public health reports. de Vries, R.E., Bakker-Pieper, A., Konings, F.E. and Schouten, B., 2013. The Communication Styles Inventory (CSI) A Six-Dimensional Behavioral Model of Communication Styles and Its Relation With Personality.Communication Research,40(4), pp.506-532. Fussell, S.R. and Kreuz, R.J., 2014.Social and cognitive approaches to interpersonal communication. Psychology Press. Knapp, M.L., Vangelisti, A.L. and Caughlin, J.P., 2014.Interpersonal Communication Human Relationships. Pearson Higher Ed. Lane, S.D., 2016.Interpersonal communication: Competence and contexts. Routledge. Wood, J.T., 2015.Interpersonal communication: Everyday encounters. Nelson Education.