For any professional success, there are many things that you may need to consider. One of them is how you communicate and pass information. Therefore, during your veterinary practice, you will require effective communication skills to succeed.
Even if this profession majorly concentrates on animals, the way you communicate with your clients is very important. Good communication will help you to maintain the best relationship between staff and other workers.
Sometimes, life can be so stressful to a point where we are never considerate of how we communicate to our fellows. Did you even know that how you communicate can pass more information compared to what you are saying? This makes it so clear that we should be very keen on how we communicate with others.
What are the general skills in effective communication
These skills allow you to give and receive information in the best manner. They include;
- Active Listening
This refers to the ability to pay keen attention to whoever you are communicating with and engaging with them in the best manner. One can know that you are actively listening to them if you can ask some questions. Active listening makes to earn respect from workmates and makes it easier to understand one another. You can improve your listening skills by focusing on the speakers, avoiding distractions such as phones, and asking questions if there are any. You can improve your ability to listen by concentrating on your client’s facial expressions, tone, and body language. So, you should focus more on what information they are passing to you rather than preparing what to say.
- Using the right communication methods
Different communication methods are used during different circumstances. This skill is so crucial for effective communication. Sometimes you may need to send some emails, call meetings or send some instant messages. All these may not be applicable at the same time. Therefore, you should be very wise on the that you use because it will greatly determine the effectiveness of your information.
- Friendliness
You can build more trust and understanding with some friendly traits such as honesty and kindness. Trying to communicate positively, asking others how they are doing, and smiling as you speak helps to enhance communication. Therefore, you are assured of more productive communication by being friendly to your co-workers and clients.
- Confidence
Any information that is presented with so much confidence will receive more response. Confident. communication will make clients trust you more. You can improve confidence by maintaining eye contact and being able to answer any posed question correctly.
- Volume and clarity
Each time you are speaking, it’s very important to clear and audible. You should adjust your voice as per the settings to ensure that you pass information more clearly. Therefore, each time you are communicating to your clients you should ensure that you are audible enough to avoid missing out on any information you are trying to pass to them.
The 7Cs of communication
- Clarity
As you try to pass any information, you should ensure that you are as clear as possible. Clear messages help to avoid some unnecessary conclusions or assumptions. As for this scenario, an assumption may lead to severe repercussions. If you do not offer clear veterinary information to your clients, it could to problems or harm their animals. Also, clear information will help to prevent clients from coming back to seek clarity. You should avoid communicating too many things at one time. This will get your customers confused.
- Conciseness
Whenever you are concise as you are communicating, it means that you are sticking to the main point while remaining as brief as possible. Employees or clients would never want to go through six sentences which would have been more concise in only three sentences. You should avoid those unnecessary or repeated points.
- Concreteness
We say a message is concrete if your audience is getting a clear picture of the entire thing. You should give them all the necessary details but it should be too much. Therefore, your message should solid and has vivid facts. This helps to get rid of guessing and avoid any misinterpretation of the meaning since you are well conversant with the message.
- Completeness
Complete communication ensures that no important information is left out. You should pass all the required information to your audience. Other times it might never be easy to make some corrections since it could be too late. Let’s say you prescribe some wrong meds and your client purchases them and offers them to their animals. This can cause a very big loss. So, you should ensure that these clients have the needed facts before anything else.
- Correctness
Any information that offers you offer to your employees or customers should always be valid, reliable and from credible sources. If there are any grammatical errors then you should correct them before you send this information. Incorrect information can pass wrong ideas, therefore, causing ineffective communication.
- Courtesy
Any information that are you are relaying should be from the audience’s viewpoint. Courtesy greatly involves what the user knows and does not know and passing the message more appropriately. Moreover, it is another way of showing respect.
- Consideration
This involves using some methods to ensure that the main points stand out. You can try and bold the prescription part so that the user can always pay more attention to this part. This also entails good language whereby the content was prepared without any kind of a hurry.
Tips on active listening
Active listening allows you to grasp whatever the speaker is trying to relay. This is more rewarding to the person talking and you will get the most out of it. This is how you can do it;
- Avoiding interruptions
Interrupting someone can lead to some distractions. This means that you should give time to the other person before you can try talking as well. You can let them speak first as these will make it easier to understand what they are trying to say. With interruptions, you might miss out on some very key information.
- Don’t plan on what to say next
You can never plan to listen as you prepare what to say next. All you can do is to listen to the vet first before you can inquire about anything.
- Don’t try coming up with opinions
The veterinary officer or your employer knows what they are trying to communicate to you. All you need to do is to listen and do as they say. If you think that you have a very important opinion, you ask them if they want to hear about it. This shows that you are listening actively.
- Asking questions
Each time you inquire about a relevant question, it indicates that you have been listening keenly. Whenever you feel you have not gotten something accurately, you can wait till your speaker pauses before you can ask the question.
Straight talking basic( avoid these pitfalls)
This makes someone think that they are communicating in a manner when they are not. This leads to poor communication with employees or clients. Here, you will think that you are communicating effectively. This leads to poor communication, therefore, passing wrong information. Also, it can cause misunderstandings.
Nonverbal communication examples:
- Facial expressions
A human a relay more expressions and you can therefore get to know emotions even before they utter a word. These include anger, sadness, happiness, and so on.
- Body posture and movements
How you move and carry yourself can pass more information than you could imagine. For example, your posture, how you sit down, stance, bearing, and many more.
- Eye contact
The way you look at someone can mean a lot. It may mean hostility, affection, interest, attraction, and more.
- Voice
Depending on what you are saying, how you say it can pass more information. Your employees and clients can pay more attention to your tone, how loud you speak, your pace, and so on.
Stress management at the moment
Veterinary medicine is the most stressful profession since one has to deal with life and death, emergencies, interruption of plans, demands from work, and conflict between the clients on the monetary term to be paid. This profession needs experience to be effective and efficient.
- Establishing resources
These resources help them to address their issues without fearing anything since they Are professional and can get help from them. These are outside resources that employees can get help from; psychologists most of the young veterinaries are suffering from mental illness and depression hence the employers need to share a list with the employees so that they can get help if need be. Veterinary organization resources- most of these organizations have created websites where one can acquire and get information and services on how to address stress.
- Encouraging veterinaries to talk about their stress
Veterinary should be encouraged to talk About what is bothering them and giving them a solution on how to handle them .when one is allowed to talk about his issues he will be free to express himself and what he’s feeling since is stress is recognized and acknowledge that’s it’s part of life hence giving one relief and knowing that he’s not the only one battling with stress.
- Direct correlation of human -. Animal bond
Animals’ movement and touch help in reducing stress.it helps in lowering high blood pressure and reducing stress. veterinarians are prone to animals and every time they spend with animals hence creating a strong bond that makes them have a strong relationship with animals hence reducing stress.
- Nourishing your well being
It’s creating time for yourself without considering job activities concentrating on your well-being and mediating how feel about yourself. An older veterinarian is considered to be having a high level of well being since he has a lot of experience on how to handle and cope with stress in a job than a young veterinary he doesn’t know how to handle the situation at hand he might be anxious when an emergency arises and forget what is the cautious he has to taken. this well-beingness can be obtained through frequent exercises after the job or before the job hence the employers should create space for the employers on where to do the yoga. socializing with friends and talking about the problems you facing and how you can handle them, aids in getting new and more information on how to handle things. Travelling and reading for pleasure this boost well-being ness and reduce stress.
Emotion control
Veterinarians face emotional challenges during work as a diagnosis of a rare disease, financial constraints from the animal’s owner, and performing complex surgery. They need to navigate from these emotions and perform their work through the following ways:
- Detachment
Some veterinarians prefer to be detached from their work since it might disappoint when you get attached. it’s so hard to control emotional feelings since it’s an automatic sense it’s doesn’t have a power on and off button veterinarian finds themselves attached. Veterinarians have to focus on the work at hand rather than the emotion of the situation for example taking the pain of the client will hinder the treatment. when a veterinarian feels the pain of the client and he supposes to perform surgery he will sympathize will the client hence not performing the surgery. Thus if good for a veterinarian to put aside emotions and concentrate on his work.
- Knowing emotional comfort zone
Veterinarians are advised and encouraged to know their emotional comfort zone to understand what they can handle what they can’t handle when it comes to working. personal preferences according to these comfort zones differ among the veterinarian hence every veterinarian needs to be aware of how they feel during euthanasia.
- Implement facilitator
Different types of situations can be faced during work they are called facilitators. When there are many types of these facilitators in a clinic it aids the veterinarians in handling any situation since they are conversant with it and at some point in their life they have encountered hence boosting their emotional control.
- Suppression of emotions
Veterinarians need to suppress their emotions to lead short-term regulations of emotions that will enhance full control and success of the task. It is a survival strategy of veterinarians.
- Training of emotional regulating strategies
There are some skills that veterinarians need to be trained on how to react to situations and how to handle them also improve emotional regulation.
