Communication

Communication is important and it plays in an important role in our everyday lives. The book mentions that listening is also an important part of communication and I know for myself this is something that I can improve on. As soon as someone communicates with me in a disrespectful manner my first reaction is to show them the same thing. This can also be a challenge in our profession, I have encountered many patients that think they know it all. They try to indicate in that I am wrong in some way and what they are stating makes sense, I laugh to myself and think "seriously I went to school for this". I enjoy reading the different scenarios the book offers. The instructors always respond in a calm professional manner. I do not know that I would have enough self control to stop, think, recognize what was being said, and think about how I would respond calmly. I wonder if this gets better with maturity or experience?

I can not think of a specific encounter in clinic that took place that involved not communicating well, but I will share one that took place in the class room setting. Every year the second year students are responsible for grouping themselves and coming up with a topic for table clinics. The best one would present their table clinic at the annual conferences in Newark. One instructor was responsible for informing us what all the rules and regulations were. The day of our practice run the other instructor asked why we were using name brands on our poster, we looked at her with blanks face and told her we had no idea what she was talking about. She asked who was responsible for informing us of the information. We informed her whom, she shook her head and said she would take care of it. I'm not sure what happened with the conversation between the head instructor and the other instructor but it would have been interesting to see what took place. Our group had to take our poster apart and had to redo it. I feel as a group we handled the situation in a very mature manner we did not start accusing or going off an a rampage for not being provided with the correct information. We allowed the higher up to take control and handle the situation. The instructor did end up apologizing to us and mentioned she though she had told us and it would never happen again.