There are a number of practice and communication skills that impact on effective client engagement during an interview and environment is one of those. Reflecting back over the past month and my interactions has helped me to understand how important environment is. I had a client that came into hospital after a motor vehicle accident. She was in the vehicle as the driver and her pregnant daughter was the passenger. Some of the ward room for patients have 4 beds in them with the beds only being separated by a curtain. There is generally a lot of noise in a room or if you are speaking to a client there would be someone who could and would listen to your conversations.

My client was having an operation on both of her legs and she was unable to weight bare for three months on both legs so getting her to a private area would be very hard. Initially and throughout the interviews she was very emotional and kept saying she couldn’t understand how or why she had survived. The daughter who was involved in the car accident came and sat beside her mom’s bedside everyday. While the client was happy for me to be involved and help her with little things she would tell5 me emotionally she was fine but I could tell by the non-verbals she was giving that there was something more she was not telling me.

 I reflected on the situation a lot and decided maybe she did not want to talk about certain things in front of her daughter. I waited until I saw her (the daughter) step out and I approached the client. I was disheartened when I got the same results but after some more reflections I thought that maybe it was the environment she was in and just didn’t want to speak in front of the other patients. After speaking to her physiotherapist, he advised that although she could not put weight on her legs she was able to be transferred to a wheelchair and wheeled to a private area for an interview. The change of environment made a world of difference for this client. She was more open and honest about what was making her emotional and about the issues she was facing. She divulged that she had been uncomfortable divulging stuff about herself and her daughter in a room full of strangers.

It was interesting to see that because I was aware of the client’s non-verbal cues and was using reflection to work out ways to help the client break through the communication barriers. Some people would have just given up the first time when the client said they had not other issues but I was confident that I was able to read her non verbal cues and know there was more the client really wanted to say.