Communication Skills In Counselling

Counselling involves a wide array of communication activities for deliberation and collaboration between two parties – the dietetics professional and the client. The process involves two major parts - (i) developing rapport, empathy and a trusting relationship; (ii) implementation of specific behaviour change strategies and techniques directed at the client’s problem.

The outcome of counselling relies to a large extent on (a) understanding of the reason for the session (b) skills and resources of the counsellor (c) the motivation, needs and interest of the client. For instance, a simple interactive session may be adequate for counselling a parent regarding child’s diet. But a prolonged and repeated counselling session may be required for

The dynamics of nutrition counselling are centered on the knowledge and the skills needed to meet the clients’ needs, wants and values. The nutrition counsellor is a guiding expert who reinforces, supports and encourages individuals as they select, evaluate and adjust goals and strategies for behaviour change. Here are some tips to communicate more effectively with clients during one-to-one counselling

Questions that can be answered with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ can quickly stall the conversation and may not give you adequate information. When talking, a counsellor must show that he/she was actually hearing what the other person is saying by recounting or reflecting it. When doing so repeat it by saying “Are you saying…” or “Do you mean…” or “If I understand it right,…” in front of it.

Remember names: Remember the client name right from the very first interaction. Use a word association trick if there is a difficulty remembering names. For example, Jaya is journalist, remember her as Journalist Jaya.

Have an objective: Counsellor should know what to do, how to do it and why.

Have basic knowledge: Thorough knowledge of the subject is important. To be an effective counsellor one has to be abreast of the latest developments in nutrition research and has to be well-versed in nutrition, diet therapy, foods, cookery, medical terminology etc.

Know the methods and techniques: A variety of systems are available for collecting and processing food intake information. Choosing an appropriate method for the particular counselling situation goes a long way, eg. in the clinical situation, the dietary intake is estimated based on a typical day’s 24 hour recall supported by a food frequency