Exploring Communication Factors in Health and Social Care Settings

This report examines the crucial factors influencing communication processes within health and social care settings. It emphasizes the role of cultural values, ethnicity, gender, age, and legislation, including the Equality Act 2010, Data Protection Act 1998, and Human Rights Act 1998, in shapin...Read More

Running head: COMMUNICATION
Factors Influencing Communication Process in Health and Social Care
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1
COMMUNICATION
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Communication Process, Cultural Factors and Values..............................................................2
Legislation, Charters and Codes of Practices in Communication..............................................3
Ways of improving the communication process........................................................................6
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................6
References..................................................................................................................................7

2
COMMUNICATION
Introduction
According to Angouri (2014) effective communication skills help in the improvement
of the quality of service among the health and the social care services. Effective
communication skills further help in procuring in patient centred care (PCC) (Webster 2013).
The following report highlights the important factors that help in modulating the
communication styles and approach in health and social care. The report will mainly focus on
how culture, values, legislation, codes of conduct and organisational polices influence the
style of communication and quality of care.
Communication Process, Cultural Factors and Values
Betancourt et al. (2016) stated that communication plays an important role in
healthcare as it helps in accessing the patient’s actual requirement and actual health status.
Cultural difference plays an important role in shaping up the global communication. Under
the cultural difference, the choice of medium plays an important role. For example,
industrialised nations most depends in the application of electronic technology and thus
provides more importance to documented messages in comparison to verbal communication.
Countries like US, UK Germany, Canada mainly follows this trends. However, countries like
Japan, though have access to technology, still has its faith on face-to-face communication
(Street 2013). Gender plays an important role in communication styles like female service
users opt for more soft and caring approach in comparison to make service users to are
upfront (Street 2013). Age also plays an important role in communication like the styles of
communication in aged care is different from paediatric care (Street 2013). Ethnicity also
defines the style of communication like in Europe, body language holds prime importance in
communication approach (Street 2013).

3
COMMUNICATION
Legislation, Charters and Codes of Practices in Communication
Styles of communication in health and social care are influenced by the stipulations
provided by charters, legislations and codes of practice. The three main legislations that guide
the communication styles in health and social care includes, Equality Act 2010, Data
Protection Act 1998 and Human Rights 1998. The three prominent charters followed in
practicing different ways of communication are CQC, Voices into Action and Department
Information Charter. After charters there come codes of practice which are strictly abided by
the heat care professionals. There are three codes of practice that vouch in favour of
appropriate communication styles among the social or health care workers while addressing
the service uses. These three codes of practice include Health and Care Professions Council
Standards of Proficiency for Social Workers, Caldicott Principles and Organisational codes of
practice.
Legislations
Equality Act 2010 The Equality Act does not allow discrimination in any part be it social
worker or patient or healthcare workers. This act of zero tolerance for
discrimination and promotion of equality guides the health and social
car workers to greet and communicate each and every patient equally
irrespective of cast, financial background, ethnicity and type of disease
(Johns et al. 2014)
Data Protection Act 1998 This Legislation mainly promotes protection and confidentiality of
information. Thus the communication practise must be shaped in such a
way that it respects and secures the patient’s information (Heitmueller et
al. 2014).
Human Rights 1998 It is the right of every human being to receive equal treatment and
resources. Such that the communication styles of health care or social
care professionals must not discriminate any patients and help them

4
COMMUNICATION
avail the right information (Donnelly 2013)
Charters
Care Quality Commission
(CQC)
CQC promotes accessible communication policy. This signifies that the
communication styles must vary from person to person. For example,
the communication style adopted for children must not be similar with
the style executed with adults (Care Quality Commission 2018).
Voices into Action Voices to action signify active listening. This signifies that the
healthcare professionals must listen to the voices of the patients in order
to make modification on the communication process and approach (Care
Quality Commission 2018)
Department Health
Information Charter
It signifies that proper information must be shared to patients and
information of the patient must be channelized to the concerned
authority without bridging the privacy laws (Department for Business
Innovation & Skills 2018).
Codes of practice
Health and Care
Professions Council
Standards of Proficiency
for Social Workers
According to Health And Care Professions Council (HCPC), the
socialcare workers must able to understand the main principle of
information governance while begin aware of effective and safe social
care information. Thus the communication style must be framed in such
a way that it respects the privacy of service users (Local Government
Association 2018)
Caldicott Principles Communication style must be designed in such a way that transform of
patient information within or outside the organisation must be
accurately defined and scrutinised (National Health Service 2013)
The Code of Professional
Standards of Practice and
Behaviour for Nurses and
Emphasise over “prioritise people”. Thus the healthcare professionals
are required to greet service users with kindness and compassion in
order to uphold their dignity and individual choice. The code of conduct

5
COMMUNICATION
Midwives also promotes active listening
Organisational Systems and Policies
Organisational system and policies provides a layout for effective and efficient
communication practices. The organisational systems that must be taken into consideration in
order improve the overall communication style in quality healthcare is the staffs roles and
responsibilities working instructions and data protection. Defining staffs’ roles and their
working instructions help the health or the social care workers to get a detailed insight about
their assigned job roles and duties. Having a clear over clear overview about their job role
helps them to work in a confident manner. Moreover, under the definition of the job roles and
responsibilities there lay strict regulation in data protection that is maintenance of privacy and
confidentiality of patient’s information. Such that the health or the social care staffs work in
accordance in shaping up their communication styles and approach (Kemppainen,
Tossavainen and Turunen 2013).
The organisational policies that promote good practices in communication styles
include maintenance of anti-bullying, equal opportunities and the whistle blowing policy. The
Whistle Blowing Policy is documented in Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998. This policy
gives proper guidance to staff members in the domain of correct procedure for drawing
attention over any wrong doing which can affect the reputation of home. The policy mainly
outlines commitment to openness and overall good communications (Near and Miceli 2013).
Bullying in the Workplace strictly commends any sort of bullying under the
workplace settings. This policy is effective because, staffs who feels powerless or insulted are
very vulnerable to leave their profession and at times fail to provide their best foot forward in
the job (Lee, Lee and Bernstein 2013).

6
COMMUNICATION
Equal opportunity means equal access of resources to all the staff in the organisation.
This will help the health or social care workers to work under unison while delivering proper
communication styles to the service users (Richard 2017).
Ways of improving the communication process
In relation to the given scenario in the module the two communication process that
can be helpful in improving the overall process of care includes Non-verbal communication
and active listening. The service users has self reported that she has hearing disability such
that non-verbal communication via touch, facial expression, gestures and postures will help
the service givers to communicate the exact information to the service users (Phutela 2015).
Active listening via eye contact will make the service users feel that her opinion matters and
this will increase her level of satisfaction and thereby helping to decrease her level of
restlessness and improving the overall quality of care (Tyagi 2013).
Conclusion
Thus from the above discussion, it can be concluded that proper framing of the
organisational polices and code of conduct helps in the procurement of the perfect
communication style which help in the improvement of the overall quality of care. Moreover,
the style and the approach of communication must be modulated in terms of cultural values,
ethnicity, gender, sex and age.

7
COMMUNICATION
References
Angouri, J., 2014. Multilingualism in the workplace: Language practices in multilingual
contexts. Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication. pp. 1 to 9
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.
Care Quality Commission. 2018. Accessible communications policy. Access date: 19th June.
2018. Retrieved from:
https://www.cqc.org.uk/sites/default/files/documents/20121015_accessible_communications_
policy_2012.pdf
Department for Business Innovation & Skills. 2018. Personal information charter. Access
date: 19th June. 2018. Retrieved from:
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-business-innovation-skills/
about/personal-information-charter
Donnelly, J., 2013. Universal human rights in theory and practice. Cornell University Press.
Heitmueller, A., Henderson, S., Warburton, W., Elmagarmid, A., Pentland, A.S. and Darzi,
A., 2014. Developing public policy to advance the use of big data in health care. Health
Affairs, 33(9), pp.1523-1530.
Johns, N., MacBride-Stewart, S., Powell, M. and Green, A., 2014. When is positive action
not positive action? Exploring the conceptual meaning and implications of the tie-break
criterion in the UK Equality Act 2010. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International
Journal, 33(1), pp.97-113.

8
COMMUNICATION
Kemppainen, V., Tossavainen, K. and Turunen, H., 2013. Nurses' roles in health promotion
practice: an integrative review. Health Promotion International, 28(4), pp.490-501.
Lee, Y., Lee, M. and Bernstein, K., 2013. Effect of workplace bullying and job stress on
turnover intention in hospital nurses. Journal of Korean Academy of Psychiatric and Mental
Health Nursing, 22(2), pp.77-87.
Local Government Association. 2018. New standards of proficiency for social workers in
England. Access date: 19th June. 2018. Retrieved from: https://www.local.gov.uk/our-
support/workforce-and-hr-support/social-workers/new-standards-proficiency-social-workers
National Health Service. 2013. Caldicott Principles revised 2013. Access date: 19th June.
2018. Retrieved from: https://www.igt.hscic.gov.uk/Caldicott2Principles.aspx
Near, J.P. and Miceli, M.P., 2013. Organizational dissidence: The case of whistle-blowing.
In Citation classics from the Journal of Business Ethics (pp. 153-172). Springer, Dordrecht.
Phutela, D., 2015. The importance of non-verbal communication. IUP Journal of Soft
Skills, 9(4), p.43.
Richard, J.A., 2017. Equality and equal opportunity for welfare. In Theories of Justice (pp.
75-91). Routledge.
Street, R.L., 2013. How clinician–patient communication contributes to health improvement:
modeling pathways from talk to outcome. Patient education and counseling, 92(3), pp.286-
291.
Tyagi, B., 2013. Listening: An important skill and its various aspects. The Criterion An
International Journal in English, 12, pp.1-8.

9
COMMUNICATION
Webster, D., 2013. Promoting therapeutic communication and patient-centered care using
standardized patients. Journal of Nursing Education, 52(11), pp.645-648.