Touch is a communication difference that people from the American culture represent differently to our culture. The American culture use touch as a main method of greeting towards other people they are very full on and like to hug, kiss and touch more than what most people would feel comfortable with. This is a huge affect towards communication as some people see this as offensive or wrong, this would especially be a huge Barrier in the health and social care setting as it could cause people to become very upset and angry.
A prime example where it could cause people to feel upset and angry is in a nursery whereby the American culture is very full on towards people’s children. Speech; the way we speak is different dependent on where we are from and what culture we come from. Accents could be a barrier to communication to us because it may become difficult for us to understand what people are saying during communication. Therefore it’s very hard to communicate with some people through speech.
This could become a huge problem in a hospital for example as it will be hard for the nurses and doctors to understand the problem and therefore it will be hard for them to help the client if they have a strong accent that is hard to understand. An example of this is miss understanding what someone in a doctor’s surgery is saying to you because they have a strong Australian accent. It’s very easy for the doctor to miss understands the symptoms that they have said they have. The doctor has to be very careful with how they react to this so that the problem is solved in the correct way. Eye contact:
Eye contact is a part of communication that is used very often. Muslims think that it is wrong for a man and women who don’t know each other to make direct eye contact towards each other as they see this as disrespectful and offence. This could become a language problem in a hospital or a doctors surgery as if there is a Muslim women who is being seen by a doctor it will be very hard for that doctor to communicate with the service user who is Muslim as he will be unable to make eye contact with her, or if he does she could become distressed or uncomfortable as it’s against her religion.
Gesture: Gesture is also used as a method of communication between different people. The Spanish cultures find certain gestures offensive and rude us for example they find the ‘thumbs up’ gesture very offensive. This could become a large problem in the health and social care setting because it will very tedious for anyone working with people of this culture as they will have to be very careful as to the way they move around in case they make any gestures that are offensive because this could lead to be them being very unhappy, which will make you look bad to any other service users.
Conclusion: It’s hard for people to be able to recognise every cultural difference but it’s possible to learn about the ones that are used by the people you working with. Although some people will be able to pick up on certain culture difference its hard as you have to be careful and stay professional as things could have a different meaning to us as they do to someone else of a different culture. It’s important when working with people of different cultures we stay professional and be careful with the gestures, eye contact and words we say.