Assignment 6 Competency: Interpersonal Skills and Healthcare Practice Interpersonal skills in the healthcare setting are a must. You as a medical provider no matter how big or small must know how to communicate with the patrons your facility services. According to Beverly Davis (n.d.) defines interpersonal skills in the healthcare setting as skills that can relax a patient during data gathering and promote the patient's confidence in the health care worker, establish trust and reduce resistance to therapy and improve the ability of the patient to cope with and recover from injury or illness. In my military occupation within the U.S. Navy there are plenty of occasion when I deal with patients. The main part of my job as a Preventive Medicine Technician is education. I potentially can be called to educate Marines and Sailors along with their family members and at random times other Department of Defense employees on such things as proper hand washing technique, deployment readiness, immunizations, and preparing food in a sanitary manner. The education process may also include field sanitation, disease outbreak investigating procedures, and sexually transmitted disease along with human immunodeficiency virus. For this week’s assignment I have chosen option B. I will provide a how to example for healthcare professionals on getting and giving the patient information on sexually transmitted infection (STIs) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The first step as a healthcare provider you must always be mindful of is patient confidentiality. This is pertinent when conducting interviews and educating patients on the disease that they might have or could potentially attack somewhere down the road. Always be mindful of your surroundings and never talk in an open environment about a patient symptoms or how and what they have contacted. When educating a patient whether in a forum or counseling them behind closed doors you want to take a six part approach. They are as follows:
1) Introduce Yourself and Orient the Patient
2) Identify Risk Behaviors
3) Identify Safer Behaviors
4) Create a Plan of Action
5) Contact Referral Information
6) Closing Conversation
Using the above concept will help you stay on course when conducting and answer question a patient might have during a counseling session. What I will cover more in depth is counseling concepts, counseling skills, and selected factors that can influence behavior changes.
When looking at the counseling concepts for interviewing patients there are three specific entities. First, focus on helping interactions, the focus must first be placed on how the client feels. Until the counselor attends the client’s feelings, the client will not hear much of what the counselor says. Be willing to bring up, listen to, and respond to the client’s feeling level reactions, beliefs, and issues. The second concept is managing your own discomfort. Examine and know your own values and seek to understand how others feel. Recognize your discomfort and manage it, don’t let it become a barrier to communication with the client. The third is setting boundaries. Both the counselor and the client must be in charge of their own lives. Don’t allow the client to make the counselor’s behavior the focus of the session. Counselor’s should not assume responsibility for the client’s behavior or expect to solve the client’s problems, only the client can do these things.
In discussing counseling skills there are four items to use, starting with the use of open ended question, being attentive, offering options not directives, and giving the patient simple information. Open ended questions can’t be answered with a simple “yes” or “no”. You must be careful about using “why” questions, as they may be received as threatening. The use of polite interactions like “tell me more” might elicit more response and comfort from the person being counseled. When you pay attention to the patient you are showing them that you are actively listening to them through positive verbal and non-verbal cues. When offering options to patients you are offering a wide array of things for them to do vice when you give directives you can possible create a power struggle between the counselor and client. Also try to avoid using “You need to” statements. Last, give the patient simple information. Try to offer the client information that is relevant to their life circumstances and their risk behaviors. Use terms and language the client can understand and remember it is okay to say that you don’t know.
There are numerous factors that can influence behavior change. Starting with knowledge and ending with policy. Knowledge is the patients understanding of how transmission happens and how it can be prevented. Perceived risk is how the patient feels while at risk of HIV or STIs. Perceived consequences can be what the patient thinks will happen if they try to instill the safer recommendations. Actual consequences are the patients view on what has happened in the past when they actually practiced safer behavior. Perceived social norms are what people might think about the patient life and about being safer. There are so many more to cover but the most important aspects have been stated.
There is no easy way to communicate with a patient how has contacted a disease form risky behavior. The only point you really can stress is safe sexual behavior. After you educate them the only person that can chose to institute the recommendations is the patient themselves.

References
Davis, B. (n.d.). Reading in the workplace - health care . Retrieved from http://cs.clark-ip.com/eslessonsonline/Health Careers/interpersonalskills.html