Communication essay
Introduction
For the past six weeks I have been on placement in a Mental Health Hospital
taking care of patients who suffer from Alzheimer's disease and dementia.
From this experience I have learnt that communicating with these types of
patients can be incredibly difficult as a majority of them found it incredibly
difficult to communicate in certain situations so that I couldn't understand what
they wanted. For those who could communicate it sometimes proved more
challenging. In this essay I will be describing briefly what Alzheimer's disease
is, the importance of communication, and what communication is. At the end
of this essay I will draw a conclusion in how I managed to communicate with
these patients.
What is communication?
Communication has been described as being both as simple and a complex
process (Rosengren,2000). The Linear Model of Communication (Miller and
Nicholson,1976) may be considered as an illustration of simple
communication. This is illustrated as follows:
Sender â' Message â' Receiver
Communication is a âtwo way' process, When you communicate you perceive
other persons responses and react with your own thoughts and feelings
(Radcliffe, M 2000).
Communication is a learned skill. Most people are born with the physical
ability to talk, but we must learn to speak well and communicate effectively.
Speaking, listening, and our ability to understand verbal and nonverbal
meanings are skills we develop in various ways (Association for
Communication Administration August 1995)
According to Fiske (1990) Communication is one of those activities that
everyone recognises, but few can define satisfactorily. Communication is
talking to one another, it is television, it is spreading information, it is our
hairstyle, it is literary criticism: the list is endless.
Delaune and Lander (2002) write that communication is the...