Effective Communication in Parent-Healthcare Professional Context

This essay delves into the crucial role of effective communication, particularly empathy and sympathy, in healthcare settings, specifically within the context of parent-healthcare professional interactions. The author highlights the emotional distress experienced by parents when their children are unwell and emphasizes how healthcare professionals can provide support and guidance. The essay underscores the importance of empathy, which involves understanding and acknowledging the parents' feelings, and sympathy, which offers supportive feelings. It discusses how these communication skills foster trust, improve patient satisfaction, and enhance treatment adherence. The essay also provides examples of how ineffective communication can lead to parental dissatisfaction and fear, and it concludes by emphasizing the positive impacts of empathy and sympathy on parental mental stability, decision-making, and their ability to cope with crisis situations. The essay references several studies to support its claims, reinforcing the importance of these communication skills in providing comprehensive and compassionate care.

Running head: EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION
EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION
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EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION
When a child is unwell or sick, parents experience different types of feelings. Besides
going through a constant sensation of emotional pain, they are also seen to feel angry over
themselves. This feeling of anger should get replaced by a feeling of guilty as they feel that they
had not been able to be good parents to their children (Halpem 2014). Sheer exhaustion results
them to lead a very strenuous period where they feel helpless when they fail to help their
children overcome the distress of the disorder. Anxiety and fear are the two common feelings
that occur in every parent whose child is not well. In such situations, healthcare professionals
have the capability to help the parents and counsel them in ways by which they can remain
emotionally stable and can support their child effectively in his or her crisis situation.
Among the different traits that healthcare professionals should possess to effectively
communicate with the parents are empathy and sympathy. Sympathy implies supportive
offerings as well as feelings. Sympathy clearly means feelings bad for the person as that person
is going through a rough patch of life. Empathy mainly involves listening to an individual,
understanding the individuals as well as the concerns they have (Rafferty et al. 2017).
Communicating with empathy means communicating with individuals making them feel that
their pain and suffering is understood so that the individual might understand themselves more
fully and thereby act on this understanding. In such situation, the professional should forget
about his or her own frame of reference and try their best to see the parent’s world as would
have been seen by the parents in their times of suffering. Therefore, empathy can be stated as the
ability of the professional to recognise, communicate and acknowledge the feelings of the
parents without experiencing the same emotions. It basically understands the pain of the parents
without steeping in their positions (Davies et al. 2017).

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EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION
The relationship and communication shared by the professionals has a dramatic effect on
the parental satisfaction, recall of instruction as well as treatment adherence. Researchers are of
the opinion that there are many factors which are predictive of the effective communication
between parents as well as physicians and nurses. These factors are the perception of interest,
warmth, caring behaviour and responsiveness. These factors can only be experienced by the
parents when the professionals have high level of empathy which they express during the
interactions with the parents. Researchers are of the opinion that professionals who provide
sympathy as well as empathy with the parents are able to develop greater trust as well as greater
relationship with that of the physicians (VanTilberg et al. 2015). This has greater effect on the
patient recall as well as satisfaction that the written instructions and even the amount of time
spent. Often studies conducted have shown that parents of unwell child who are communicated
in details but not empathetically feel that they are not treated with respect. They are also seen to
develop an unrecognised or unaddressed fears that make them feel unhappy about the amount of
information provided to the. This can be explained with the help of an example. in the midst of
night, if a professional arrives to a concerned patient and discusses a new aspect of a procedure
that needs to be taken for the child, describing every information about it before surgery, the
patients would be not only taken by surprise but would also make them feel anxious and fearful
colouring their overall satisfaction and perceptions of sufficiency of the information. Therefore,
facilitators of improved communication would include clear demonstration of the sympathy,
empathy and respect developing a strong parent-nurse relationship based on truth and loyalty.
This would make them feel that their child is in safe hands who are trying their best to relive the
child from the distress (Goldstein 2015)

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EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION
Therefore, empathy as well as sympathy can be seen to have positive impacts on the
mental stability of the parents when used in communication procedures. Empathy helps in
building connections with the parents of the distressed child by which they can maintain their
emotional stability. Empathy and sympathy also allows parents and professionals to develop trust
among themselves by which they tend to adhere with the strategies told to them for betterment
with their son. Empathy and sympathy have the capability to handle the stress of parents. They
help professionals to answer all the queries of the parents regarding their child health in ways by
which parents feel that they are not alone but professionals are also beside them in their crisis
times (Nash, Nash and Frith 2015). When professionals communicate with empathy, it also helps
parents to make better decisions regarding their children health.
From the above discussions, it become easier to understand how empathy and sympathy
act as two important communication skills that have the power to develop emotional stability in
minds of parents making them take proper decisions and helping themselves to fight the crisis
situation effectively.

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EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION
References;
Davies, B., Steele, R., Krueger, G., Albersheim, S., Baird, J., Bifirie, M., Cadell, S., Doane, G.,
Garga, D., Siden, H. and Strahlendorf, C., 2017. Best Practice in Provider/Parent
Interaction. Qualitative health research, 27(3), pp.406-420.
Goldstein, R.D., 2015. What conversations do bereaved parents remember?. J Palliat Care
Med, 5(202), p.2.
Halpern, J., 2014. From idealized clinical empathy to empathic communication in medical
care. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, 17(2), pp.301-311.
Nash, P., Nash, S. and Frith, C., 2015. Perspectives on Spirituality and Sick Children and Young
People in a Multicultural Paediatric Hospital Context–Identifying and Responding to Spiritual
Needs. Critical Issues, p.321.
Rafferty, K.A., Hutton, K. and Heller, S., 2017. “I Will Communicate With You, But Let Me Be
In Control”: Understanding How Parents Manage Private Information About Their Chronically
Ill Children. Health communication, pp.1-10.
Van Tilburg, M.A., Levy, R.L., Walker, L.S., Von Korff, M., Feld, L.D., Garner, M., Feld, A.D.
and Whitehead, W.E., 2015. Psychosocial mechanisms for the transmission of somatic symptoms
from parents to children. World Journal of Gastroenterology: WJG, 21(18), p.5532.