The Communication Process and Components
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The communications process describes how people communicate using generic terms. The communications process is used to explain how communication can happen in a variety of settings and is helpful for identifying reasons for communication breakdowns.
The sender has a message he wants to send, let’s say through speech. The human mind uses a combination of different mediums (words, images, smells, feelings, etc) to work through ideas. But since the communication is going to be through speech, the speech center in his brain (in the right hemisphere in 80% of people) has to encode the thought process into words. The message is delivered to the receiver (the other person) literally at the speed of sound. The speech center in the other guys’ brain takes the speech and translates it into yet a different thought process. Feedback comes in the form of a reply. You could apply this to literally any type of communication medium:
| Encoding | It suddenly dawns on the driver that he needs to stop to get some fuel. |
| Message | He formulates a sentence to the passenger, “…we need fuel” |
| Decoding | The passenger hears the words and figures out that the last place to get fuel was 2 miles back. |
| Receiver | The passenger hears the words |
| Feedback | The passenger says, “well, turn around, we passed it 2 miles back.” |
Another example could be:
| Encoding | EMT hears gunshots outside the apartment complex and know she needs to leave the scene |
| Message | “Med One To Dispatch, shots fired, we are leaving the scene.” |
| Decoding | The dispatcher hears the words, dispatches the Police to the scene. |
| Receiver | The dispatcher hears the words, dispatches the Police to the scene. |
| Feedback | The dispatcher transmits, “Dispatch to Med One, clear on shots fired, Police enroute, all other units standby until we hear from Med One.” |
When the patient reveals the chief complaint, the EMT will naturally respond to the complaint a variety of ways:
- Facilitation – The patient says something, but the EMT needs more information to understand the problem.
- Silence – Observing a period of silence for 10 seconds to see if the patient adds more to the complaint or changes what they were going to say.
- Reflection – Simply restating what the patient said, hoping they will add something.
- Empathy – Names a feeling and then expresses said feeling to the patient.
- Clarification – Similar to reflection in that the EMT restates what the patient just said, but instead the EMT is hoping the patient will just confirm as opposed to add something.
- Confrontation – When the patient says something that disagrees with what was said or seen earlier, the EMT will confront the patient with the errant information.
- Interpretation – The EMT summarizes what the patient said in their own words, the patient would either agree or disagree with the analysis.
- Explanation – The EMT gives an explanation for something the patient said or asked. The patient understands that the EMT was paying attention.
- Summary – This is where the EMT would review the details of the conversation and allow the patient time to make corrections.
