Please speak in MY language!

The idea of communication has never appeared to me as a problem or a real concern. Since I can remember I have always been able to talk to people and communicate with them. However, since I have started working in a community center in downtown Toronto, I have come to this realization that sometimes communication can be quite challenging and not as easy as it may sound. We may speak in a same language but our level of understanding or even our personal interpretation can be quite different.

I remember a couple of months ago, a young single mother came to health community center that I work and asked for some advice regarding her health and diet. Based on my trainings, I started asking about her regular eating patterns, her medical history, etc. after a while I realized that she consumes too much sodium in her diet and she may be in a high risk of high blood pressure. I didn’t use the term hypertension because from this experience I know now using some terms may not be appropriate for everybody. I started telling her about the side effects of consuming high level of sodium and hypertension and I thought I was giving her great information and felt pretty good about it. A few minutes later after I was done lecturing her, I asked her if she had any question. She simply said no, thanked me and left. Later that day, my supervisor came to see me and told me the young lady that was here earlier told her she didn’t understand a word I was telling her and she felt well… according to herself a bit stupid. Well ironically I felt pretty stupid myself. How could I imagine that she had good health backgrounds and made her feel that way? After that day I realized when it comes to health communication, we as health care professionals need to be extra careful and make sure our patients understand what we actually talk about.

Living in a city like Toronto where a large number of people come from varieties of backgrounds and cultures, has taught me a few things about people’s behavior, their expectations and understanding. This is even more apparent when we go to different parts of the city such as china town, little India, little Italy or Danford area. In order to communicate effectively with all these groups of people we need to be familiar with different communities. And I can tell you that it’s not an easy thing to do. I have a friend which comes from an Asian background. Obesity has never been an issue in her family. On the other hand my Italian friend considers eating and food as a major part of her life. When I think of it, it makes me wonder if one is really capable of getting to know and understand all these different backgrounds and cultures and if yes what methods or ways can be used?