Language for Good or Bad

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues apace and face masks appears to be with us for months, if not years, to come I had an interesting experience earlier this week with poor communication. I hasten to add the poor communication was from a hospital, not me. In pre-COVID days when we talked to each other, we could see the other person’s facial expressions and their lips moving. We have lost all that visual information we relied on for effective communication. Now, we have to listen carefully to what is being said. Irony and faux anger need to be communicated not just verbally, but with facial expression.

In addition to facial signals the message needs to be clear. Health professionals are frequently guilty of lapsing into jargon or forgetting our patients only retain a very small percentage of the message we are communicating. A well-intentioned message can easily be misunderstood due to poor emphasis.

Two of my patients this week had cataract surgery last week. The discharge nurse in the hospital emphasised the need to urgently attend our local A&E department if they had any problems. The problems the nurse was talking about were significant sight threatening problems. The patients listened and apparently understood the message. One of the patients postponed asking for advice because they did not realise the potential severity of their problem and the other did not realise their symptoms were part of the normal post-operative recovery. Perhaps we should all take time to reflect on how we communicate with each other during the pandemic and beyond. My New Year resolution … practice my listening and communication skills. As this is the season of joy and goodwill here is an unambiguous message from me. I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a healthy and prosperous New Year.