Barriers to Communication

[madwife2002, BSN, RN]

What is Effective Communication?

In order to facilitate effective communication, one must understand how the process works. In its most basic model, two-way communication involves a sender, a message and a receiver.

When effective communication is at work, what the receiver decodes is what the sender sends (Zastrow, 2001).

A breakdown in the communication process may occur if the intended message was not encoded or decoded properly. Comments may be taken the wrong way, a compliment may be taken as an insult, or a joke might be interpreted as a put-down. There may also be barriers in the transfer process; these barriers may include:

• Noise, static
  
• Multiple communications
  
• Fatigue, stress
  
• Distractions
  
• Incomplete message
  
• Ambiguous wording
  
• Lack of credibility
  
• Lack of rapport
  
• Think in personal terms
  
• Jargon
  
• Boring
  

(Kirby, 1997)

In normal life communication between two Americans can be distrupted in many ways as referenced above, so when you throw into the mix cultural and language problems, we can only imagine how there can be a complete breakdown.

During the past 3 years I have found many such communication breakdowns, but one thing will always emerge as a repair agent is the non verbal communication we all know as, 'Smiling".