Through this course students will examine the importance of human interaction, including verbal and nonverbal communication, the communication feedback loop, barriers, cultural competence, and effective communication techniques. Students will learn communication skills to assist in caring for patients and families to meet health care needs, therapeutic communication skills, and unique practices involved with caring for special populations. This course also introduces students to basic medical definitions and abbreviations, including word analysis, word usage, roots, prefix and suffix, with an emphasis placed on spelling and constructing medical terms. Students will be given an introduction to the positional and directional terms used to describe the human body.
Objectives:
- Identify the components of interpersonal communication
- Explain the skills required for effective oral communication
- List the best practices and prejudices involved in forming effective workplace communication
- Describe the essential elements of therapeutic communication
- Explain the ways that technology can enhance or become a barrier to communication
- Identify skills and strategies used to communicate with clients and families
- Discuss different ways of communicating with clients with behavioral and other disabilities
- Summarize the history of medical terminology and how terms are formed
- Describe the relationship between the structures of the body
- Differentiate the positional and directional terms used to describe anatomical locations
- Identify the nutrients that fuel basic body functions
