Objective: To gain insight into how communication vulnerable people and health-care professionals experience the communication in dialogue conversations, and how they adjust their conversation using augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) or other communication strategies. Methods: Communication vulnerable clients and health-care professionals in a long-term care institution were observed during a dialogue conversation (n = 11) and subsequently interviewed (n = 22) about their experiences with the conversation. The clients had various communication difficulties due to different underlying aetiologies, such as acquired brain injury or learning disorder. Results from the observations and interviews were analysed using conventional content analysis. Results: Seven key themes emerged regarding the experiences of clients and professionals: clients blame themselves for miscommunications; the relevance of both parties preparing the conversation; a quiet and familiar environment benefitting communication; giving clients enough time; the importance and complexity of nonverbal communication; the need to tailor communication to the client; prejudices and inexperience regarding AAC. The observations showed that some professionals had difficulties using appropriate communication strategies and all professionals relied mostly on verbal or nonverbal communication strategies. Conclusion: Professionals were aware of the importance of preparation, sufficient time, a suitable environment and considering nonverbal communication in dialogue conversations. However, they struggled with adequate use of communication strategies, such as verbal communication and AAC. There is a lack of knowledge about AAC, and professionals and clients need to be informed about the potential of AAC and how this can help them achieve equal participation in dialogue conversations in addition to other communication strategies.
DOCUMENT
This dissertation describes a research project about the communication between communication vulnerable people and health care professionals in long-term care settings. Communication vulnerable people experience functional communication difficulties in particular situations, due to medical conditions. They experience difficulties expressing themselves or understanding professionals, and/or professionals experience difficulties understanding these clients. Dialogue conversations between clients and professionals in healthcare, which for example concern health-related goals, activity and participation choices, diagnostics, treatment options, and treatment evaluation, are, however, crucial for successful client-centred care and shared decision making. Dialogue conversations facilitate essential exchanges between clients and healthcare professionals, and both clients and professionals should play a significant role in the conversation. It is unknown how communication vulnerable people and their healthcare professionals experience dialogue conversations and what can be done to support successful communication in these conversations. The aim of this research is to explore how communication vulnerable clients and professionals experience their communication in dialogue conversations in long-term care and how they can best be supported in improving their communication in these conversations.
DOCUMENT
This paper lays the groundwork for building a communication model that will help cultivate communities of practice through the use of strategic communications. Theoretical models describing communities of practice in organizational knowledge generation typically have three main actors; the individual, the community and the organization. These models usually mention the necessity for their interaction, but are never specific about how this should be done. Furthermore, there has been little research on how communication processes can affect the relationship between the three actors in the model. This paper proposes that the interaction between the community, the individual members of the community and the organization must be facilitated and promoted through specific strategic communications in order to guarantee the success of the community. Topics such as knowledge sharing, knowledge building and organizational learning are looked at through a communication perspective.
DOCUMENT
OBJECTIVE: To provide an overview of available strategies and tools that support physiotherapists to recognise patients with LHL and to adapt the physiotherapeutic communication during the diagnostic phase.METHODS: PubMed, Embase, CINAHL and PsycINFO were searched for publications appearing between 2000 and June 2024. Additional grey literature was searched up till October 2022. Studies were included if they described strategies and tools aimed at supporting communication with patients with Limited Health Literacy in physiotherapy. Exclusion criteria focusing on general health literacy prevalence, behavioural interventions, or basic communication training.RESULTS: Out of the 9960 unique studies identified by our literature searches, 314 full-text studies were assessed and 98 met the inclusion criteria. The data on strategies and tools were extracted into the following six categories: verbal communication (n = 3), written communication (n = 34), digital device (n = 9), questionnaire (n=19), interpreter (n = 22), and other media (n = 2). Within these categories, tools and strategies were further classified based on the communication aims. Some tools and strategies were uncategorisable.CONCLUSION: While various strategies and tools exist for recognising patients with limited Health Literacy, they are often generic and not tailored to the physiotherapeutic context. This scoping review identifies a gab in physiotherapeutic approaches, particularly on those that go beyond information provision.PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: To improve communication in physiotherapy practice, there is a need for the development of tailored strategies and tools that reflect the specific dynamic of the physiotherapeutic process. We recommend engaging in design-based research that involves both patient and physiotherapist to co-create tools and strategies. In the meantime, physiotherapists are advised to use general communication strategies and tools and refer to our resources to select tools that best align with their specific goals.
DOCUMENT
Background: Research on maternity care often focuses on factors that prevent good communication and collaboration and rarely includes important stakeholders – parents – as co-researchers. To understand how professionals and parents in Dutch maternity care accomplish constructive communication and collaboration, we examined their interactions in the clinic, looking for “good practice”. Methods: We used the video-reflexive ethnographic method in 9 midwifery practices and 2 obstetric units. Findings: We conducted 16 meetings where participants reflected on video recordings of their clinical interactions. We found that informal strategies facilitate communication and collaboration: “talk work” – small talk and humour – and “work beyond words” – familiarity, use of sight, touch, sound, and non-verbal gestures. When using these strategies, participants noted that it is important to be sensitive to context, to the values and feelings of others, and to the timing of care. Our analysis of their ways of being sensitive shows that good communication and collaboration involves “paradoxical care”, e.g., concurrent acts of “regulated spontaneity” and “informal formalities”. Discussion: Acknowledging and reinforcing paradoxical care skills will help caregivers develop the competencies needed to address the changing demands of health care. The video-reflexive ethnographic method offers an innovative approach to studying everyday work, focusing on informal and implicit aspects of practice and providing a bottom up approach, integrating researchers, professionals and parents. Conclusion: Good communication and collaboration in maternity care involves “paradoxical care” requiring social sensitivity and self-reflection, skills that should be included as part of professional training.
DOCUMENT
Background: The integrated uptake of patient-reported experience measures, using outcomes for the micro, meso and macro level, calls for a successful implementation process which depends on how stakeholders are involved in this process. Currently, the impact of stakeholders on strategies to improve the integrated use is rarely reported, and information about how stakeholders can be engaged, including care-users who are communication vulnerable, is limited. This study illustrates the impact of all stakeholders on developing tailored implementation strategies and provides insights into supportive conditions to involve care-users who are communication vulnerable. Methods: With the use of participatory action research, implementation strategies were co-created by care-users who are communication vulnerable (n = 8), professionals (n = 12), management (n = 6) and researchers (n = 5) over 9 months. Data collection consisted of audiotapes, reports, and researchers’ notes. Conventional content analysis was performed. Results: The impact of care-users concerned the strategies’ look and feel, understandability and relevance. Professionals influenced impact on how to use strategies and terminology. The impact of management was on showing the gap between policy and practice, and learning from previous improvement failures. Researchers showed impact on analysis, direction of strategy changes and translating academic and development experience into practice. The engagement of care-users who are communication vulnerable was supported, taking into account organisational issues and the presentation of information. Conclusions: The impact of all engaged stakeholders was identified over the different levels strategies focused on. Care-users who are communication vulnerable were valuable engaged in co-creation implementation strategies by equipping them to their needs and routines, which requires adaptation in communication, delimited meetings and a safe group environment. Trial registration: Reviewed by the Medical Ethics Committee of Zuyderland-Zuyd (METCZ20190006). NL7594 registred at https://www.trialregister.nl/. Plain English summary Exploring care-users experiences is important for decisions to improve quality of care. This applies to care-users in the disability care in particular, as these care-users are highly dependent on their care professional. Instruments that facilitate a dialogue between care-users and care professionals about experiences with care are not always used correctly. Furthermore, it is difficult to translate outcomes into decisions about improving quality of care for the individual care-user and the organisation. In our study, care-users, care professionals, management and researchers developed strategies together to improve the use of care-user experience measures. This study aims to show the impact of all participants, including care-users, professionals, management and researchers, on developing implementation strategies. Additionally, the study aims to show how care-users can participate in developing strategies whilst having problems with communication due to intellectual, developmental and acquired disabilities. We found that care-users gave crucial input to the look and feel, and understandability and relevance of the strategies. The contribution of the professionals had impact on how to use strategies and terminology used in instructions and visuals. Management shared lessons learned and represented the needs on the policy level. Researchers used their analytical skills and facilitated the group process. Care-users were able to collaborate by taking into account their needs and because information was presented to them clearly and attractively.
DOCUMENT
Effective and quality online education requires an instructional design approach that can lead to educational transformation. This approach can be characterized by advanced flexibility, learner autonomy and extensive use of digital technologies to enhance learning outcomes. One of the main challenges of online education, which has been investigated by current researchers in the field, is the physical distance between educators and learners. In this context, synchronous communication, perceived as the direct communication that occurs in real time between learners and educators, has been considered as a way to bridge this distance and improve communication and interaction in teaching and learning.As the field of synchronous communication in online education is ever maturing, this paper attempts to systematically review the literature relevant to technological tools and strategies, which can lead to a productive student experience. The two authors collaborate to apply a qualitative method, coding and synthesizing the results using multiple criteria. The main objective of this systematic literature review is to identify the tools, theories and strategies that online education providers can implement to ensure that synchronous instruction enhances students’ learning outcomes. The research, which was conducted between January and April 2020, used Google Scholar and ProQuest data bases. The reviewed papers were selected with prior chosen keywords: synchronous communication, technological tools for synchronous communication, effective synchronous communication, synchronous communication learning experiences, strategies for synchronous communication, theories for synchronous communication, software for synchronous communication. The term interaction was also used instead of the term communication in the combination of keywords mentioned above. The keywords were combined while operating the Boolean operator “AND”. The selected papers were published in peer-reviewed journals, in English, between 2010 and 2020. The selection process consisted of four phases: Identification round, first round of exclusion, second round of exclusion, and final inclusion round. The identified articles were collected in a shared RefWorks project.On balance, results are divided in two main groups:a) technological tools, which enhance synchronous communication,b) learning theories and strategies, which can contribute to an effective synchronous communication experience.As a final step, the authors consolidate evidence for the benefit of academics and practitioners in online education interested in the efficient use of synchronous communication for pedagogical purposes. Such evidence also provides potential options and pathways for future research.
DOCUMENT
Background: Talking Mats is a framework developed to support communication with communication vulnerable people. Objective: The objective was twofold: to provide an overview of the objectives, target groups and settings for which Talking Mats has been used (Part 1), and an overview of empirical scientific knowledge on the use of Talking Mats (Part 2). Methods: In this scoping review scientific and grey literature was searched in PubMed, Cinahl, Psycinfo, Google, and Google Scholar. Articles that described characteristics of Talking Mats or its use were included. For Part 2, additional selection criteria were applied to focus on empirical scientific knowledge. Results: The search yielded 73 publications in Part 1, 12 of which were included in Part 2. Talking Mats was used for functional objectives (e.g. goal setting) and to improve communication and involvement. Part 2 showed that Talking Mats had positive influences on technical communication, effectiveness of conversations, and involvement and decision making in conversations. However, the level of research evidence is limited. Conclusions: Talking Mats can be used to support conversations between professionals and communication vulnerable people. More research is needed to study the views of people who are communication vulnerable and to study the effects of Talking Mats.
DOCUMENT
Problems with communication and collaboration among perinatal caregivers threaten the quality and safety of care given to mothers and babies. Good communication and collaboration are critical to safe care for mothers and babies. In this study the researchers focused on studies examining the factors associated with good communication and collaboration as they occur in working routines in maternity care practice. Their study is part of a growing trend of identifying the positive aspects of communication and collaboration in maternity care.
MULTIFILE
This paper introduces the Analysis Framework of Face Interaction (AFFI) which is developed based on a new face dimension termed Face Confirmation − Face Confrontation at two levels: Individual level within the group and Collective level between groups. This proposed framework of face analysis reveals a dearth of research on face confrontation as essential communication strategies. It also points out how the mainstream research on facework has been limited on the collective level of analysis. The authors argue that using AFFI will help researchers reduce cultural over-generalisation; enable them to involve more specific cultural, contextual and situational characteristics of each face case to analyse face negotiation from a more holistic perspective.
MULTIFILE
