Communication Processes

Communication Processes

Communication occupies up to 75% of every working day and can occur in verbal and non-verbal means (Fred Pryor, 2005). In order for an organization to be successful, it must demonstrate successful communication among staff members. Communication is considered to be successful when the desired objective is attained. All communication has a purpose, whether to inform, to convince or to serve some other purpose; communication is what ties all departments within an organization together. Without communication an organization is sure to fail. Within the University of Texas- University Health Services, one can observe several means of successful communication. It is this form of communication that ensures quality patient care, happy students and happy staff members. Unfortunately, if one looked close enough he could also see unsuccessful communication taking place. This is where improvement is needed to ensure patients are taken care of properly, staff members remain happy and nothing is missed during patient care.

One reason UHS has successful communication is because the managers take the time to ensure their staff members clearly understand the messages they are trying to send. Whether they send the message verbally or electronically, the managers do not assume their staff members understand the message. Instead, they follow-up with the staff to see if any clarification of the message is needed. If clarification is needed, then further communication takes place. This cycle of communication usually occurs when new policy and procedures are sent out via email. The policies are sent as an attachment to a message that instructs the staff members to review the policy changes. Once the manager feels the staff has had an adequate amount of time to review the policy, he will then personally ask each employee if they understand the changes or if they have any questions. If there are questions the manager will take the time to answer them and then he will send out an additional email regarding the question and answer to the rest of the staff. This additional email ensures all staff members are completely informed.

According to shamanic teacher and healer Don Miguel Ruiz, one should not make assumptions (Four Agreements, 1997). When assumptions are made, mistakes or misunderstanding are likely to occur. This is evident at UHS when unsuccessful communication occurs. When the sender of a message assumes the receivers will understand the message completely, miscommunication can occur. One recent example of this occurred between an employee from the benefits department and a nursing staff member. During communication via email, the benefit employee "lined up the numbers" regarding the nurse's insurance premiums. The benefit employee assumed the nurse would understand what all the numbers represented; therefore, she did not follow-up with the nurse. When the nurse questioned the numbers,