How Well Do You Communicate?
Language Skills are Vital for Health Care Professionals
If you're considering a career in health care you must be able to communicate effectively with both written and oral language skills.
For foreign-born health care workers, communication in the language of their new country can be a challenge. They must not only learn how to speak the language, but to write it, and to use appropriate medical jargon as well.
Accents, idioms and slang terms can be difficult to learn and understand even for natives moving to various regions of their own country. Understanding the culture and acceptable behaviors is also part of learning to adjust and to communicate effectively.
Thinking on Your Feet
In emergency or crisis situations you will need to be able to think quickly and to relay information to others in a few concise words. For instance, if you are involved in resuscitative measures for a patient, you will need to be able to communicate with other members of the team who may arrive at different times to take part in the care. Everyone needs to have a clear understanding of who is doing what and what to do next especially if one person has become tired and roles need to shift.
Once an assessment, procedure or instruction is completed, you will need to be able to document your findings, procedures, interventions and patient outcomes in the patient's chart. This is usually narrative in nature and may also be accompanied by a series of check lists. The structure of the narrative passages may be determined by specific types of information such as subjective, objective, action, and a plan. This is known as SOAP charting. There are several other types of charting that may be used, Therefore, your skills at written language are also very important. Accuracy is crucial and your documentation should be as complete as possible.
The Art of Documentation
Learning to document is an art in itself. Telling a complete story in a few words takes practice. You won't have time to write a novel, and other team members won't have time to read through a lengthy document either. Yet, you need to be as complete and accurate as possible. Patient charts are considered a legal document. You must be careful with what you say and how you say it to be sure you are not misunderstood.
It is equally important not to omit information. In this legal document, your charting is your proof that something was done. If you didn't chart it, you didn't do it in the eyes of the courts.
Importance of Documentation Varies
The education process for health care professionals in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Europe emphasizes documentation, whereas in many other countries such as Asian and African nations, the documentation is not as important. This makes it more difficult for foreign-born or foreign-educated health care professionals to adapt to the communication needs and health care processes in these countries.
Consider Remedial Courses
If you are considering a health care career and have oral or written communication deficiencies, you may want to add some remedial speech or written language courses to your education program. Many entrance exams for health care programs test the reading and writing abilities of candidates and require skills of at least the 10th grade level to pass. Licensure exams require the ability to read and write at a similar level in order to pass.
