Interpersonal Skills of Men & Women In Health-care sector

Dr.R.Krishnaveni & Ms.R.Thamaraiselvi

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• Analyzing skills – It includes the ability to perceive the patient’s non-verbal behaviors in the situation, effectiveness in the listen process, providing adequate attention to the speaker, ability to recall specific information relating to the current conversation and also respond appropriately with the patient.

Table: 3 showing the responses for Analyzing skills

The above table shows that the analyzing skills of both the Doctors and the Nurses in formal communications are not adequate to build rapport with their patients. More than 50% of them are yet to develop effective communicative strategies.

Table: 4 showing the responses for Responding skills

The above table says that when compared to the Doctors, 60% of the Nurses seem to have adequate responding skills towards their patients and there are 4% of Doctors and Nurses who are very poor in formal communicative situations.

• Remembering skills – It includes the ability to communicating clearly based on the past discussions with the patient, receptive to the points expressed by the speaker in any situation, let the patient to complete message without interrupting and also remembering the details that happened some time ago so as to respond with relevance.

Table: 5 showing the responses for Remembering skills

The above table shows that when compared to Nurses, 24% of Doctors seem to have adequate remembering skills and there are 12% of Doctors and 16% of Nurses who need to develop the skills to communicate effectively with patients.

• Interpersonal levels – The overall ability to communicate effectively with others were analyzed to compare the interpersonal levels of Doctors and Nurses based on the skills.

Table: 6 showing the interpersonal levels of respondents based on the skills

Table 6 reveals that Doctors seem to possess adequate interpreting skills than the Nurses and the responding skills are found to be adequate among the Nurses than the Doctors. The Chart given below also shows that other skills like Focusing, Analyzing and Remembering seem to be prevailing almost in the same levels with both Doctors and Nurses.

Chart showing the interpersonal levels of respondents based on the skills

In the present day situation, Doctors as well as Nurses in the major hospitals are expected to be strong and effective in their interpersonal communication skills. Moreover, among the five basic skills given here, the discrimination seems to be skills relating to interpretation and responding, which are highly essential in the health-care industry. Therefore, this survey can help the respondents to identify the lacking areas and can improve their interpersonal levels to achieve the organizational goals like Quality service, Customer satisfaction and the corporate image.

IV. Inferences: Interpersonal skills are one of the quality improvement tools used by the Doctors and the Nurses in every hospital, however due to psychological reasons like ego status, emotional feelings, stress levels and socio-cultural reasons like economic conditions, biased opinions etc they tend to fail in optimizing their skills.

The following are the findings of the communication research made with an aim to suggest ideas for maximizing the interpersonal levels among respondents to promote organizational development:

2) Interpreting skills – These skills are required for effective diagnosis with the patients and also to understand other’s feelings during team interactions. However, it was found that 44% of Doctors and 36% of Nurses seem to have the ability to interpret ideas, opinions and facts during the process. Whereas, there 56% of Doctors and 64% of Nurses who need to take care of interpreting skills by improving their technical knowledge, develop innovative strategies to obtain the responses from others and also learn to increase their thinking process.

3) Analyzing skills – Doctors and Nurses certainly require the ability to relate their perceptions with theoretical knowledge and the message received from others so as to fulfill the mutual needs in the process. It was found that only 40% of Doctors and 40% of Nurses are analytical in their formal discussions. The remaining respondents seemed to be lacking in analytical skills. It may be because they are not attentive during the listening process or may be unable to apply theoretical knowledge on real life situations. So 60% of them need to improve their analytical skills for achieving the long run benefits like Customer Satisfaction, Brand Image and Career Growth.

4) Responding skills – In the health-care organizations, it is highly essential that Doctors and Nurses hone the responding skills so that they can attend the receiver immediately and provide a timely support in an effective way. However, the study reveals that among the Doctors 40% of them are good in responding to others, 56% respond sometimes and the remaining found to be not quick in reactions. Among the Nurses, 60% of them are excellently responding to others, 36% of them admit to be responding sometimes and the remaining 4% need to realize the importance of responding skills in their professional setup.

5) Remembering skills – These skills are required for Doctors and Nurses for to take appropriate decisions based on the previous conversations, diagnosis and ailments of others. Through this study, it is inferred that only 24% of Doctors have the ability to remember the data and the relevant information, 64% of them possess these skills sometimes and there are 12% of them to say that they are poor in remembering them.

This may be due to their busy schedule and work pressure during the day. Among the Nurses, only 16% were found to be good in remembering the relevant information, 68% of them reveal that sometimes they remember and 16% are poor in remembering any information to the context. It may be because of preoccupied thoughts, a state of confusion, lack of experience etc.

6) Interpersonal levels – Based on the five thrust areas of interpersonal skills, both the Doctors and Nurses were surveyed to find the overall level of interpersonal communication between them. As a result, it shows that Doctors and Nurses have almost the same scores against the focusing, analyzing and remembering skills. Whereas, the skill levels vary between them for the ability to interpret the ideas and also with responding to others call, queries and needs. Among the interviewed respondents, 19.2% of the Doctors seemed to possess sufficient skills for interpreting ideas into actions and unlikely 16.96% of Nurses are said to be good in interpreting. Therefore Doctors are found to be better than the Nurses in the hospitals in interpreting the verbal and nonverbal clues of their customer, colleagues and others.

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Contributing Writer : Ms. R. Thamaraiselvi - Faculty with more than 12 yrs of teaching management to graduates and executives. An efficient Corporate Trainer in human resource area. A free lancer to some of the leading publications in India. Pursuing Phd in the Organizational behavioural area.