Module 4 – Non-verbal communication

In daily life we concentrate a lot on the spoken word however, nonverbal communication is often more important and informative. As said before 55% % of the information received in a conversation, consist of non-verbal signs. If we get incoherent information concerning verbal and non-verbal signs we tend to trust the non-verbal ones. The best example is doctors/ physicians/ health care workers who ask their patients to start talking about their problems but are looking at the watch and the door at that very moment. The patient probably will not start talking or will at least be confused due to the different signals.

Some non-verbal communication strategies are universal and important in medicine like: eye-contact, facing the other person, smiling at the right moment etc. But there are also some false friends, as the following video shows. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa_GCK-Czqs]