Clinician's 'Strategies For Communicating With Clients'

David Doucette

553 Discussion Post

10/24/2017

1. Review the “Strategies for Communicating with Clients” on page 213 in the Schell & Schell book; can you think of some examples of when you observed a clinician using one of these strategies? What was the result?

Here is an example of an occupational therapist that I observed using questioning, listening, and encouraging as a way to communicate with the client. When a lady came in with lymphedema in her right hand, the therapist asked her many questions about how this injury affected her daily occupations. He then listened to her talk about many of her concerns. Some of the concerns included getting dressed, cooking, and driving to work. Later when he was helping her practice put on pieces of clothing, he continuously encouraged her at every step of the process. The result of doing these three strategies was a better therapeutic alliance between

It is our job, as therapist, to communicate with the clients and try to help them return to doing what they need to do and love. When a therapist tries “shifting conversation” but the client does not want to stop talking about something unrelated to therapy, it can be difficult to make progress in therapy. A possible way to overcome this may be to take a break and excuse themselves for a minute so they can come back and change the subject of the conversation to something more pertinent. Another example of a barrier would be “creating choices” for someone who does not want to pick from a list of choices. A way to overcome this barrier could be for the therapist to choose for the client and slowly work on helping the client make their own decisions. The final barrier I came up with is that of “gesturing.” Some people do not understand or comprehend a gesture. Therefore, a way to overcome this complication includes purposefully being more vocal in what the therapist wants from the