Non Verbal Communication. Communications & Media Article Critique

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February 23, 2020
Non-Verbal Communication
Managing patient’s pain is perhaps one of the most exciting yet challenging fields in the field of medicine. Being able to handle the patient’s pain requires consideration of a variety of approaches that includes pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions that must be combined in order to prevent adverse effects while also reducing the patient’s pain perception.
Accordingly, this article, written by Mollie, Blanch-Hartigan, and Hall, focuses on the use of ‘non-verbal’ techniques to manage both the objective and subjective perceptions of pain on the part of the patient. As a foundation of this study, the authors utilized Craig’s Social Communication Model (SCM), which posits that the perception of pain is not only based on the physiological and psychological predisposition of the patient but also the social circumstances emanating from their external environment.
What makes this exciting is the fact that most non-pharmacological approaches have focused on the use of ‘verbal’ (i.e., consoling or comforting) to help the patient reduce the subjective perception of pain. Nonetheless, the authors of the paper found out that the effective use of non-verbal techniques creates different effects on the objective and subjective perceptions of pain. On the one hand, it was reported that the high utilization of nonverbal support increases objective pain tolerance for the patient. On the other hand, it was also found out that the subjective effects of this non-verbal support vary depending on the gender of the physicians who employ it. Notably, the authors found that while male physicians who use this technique was able to decrease...