Trust
The health worker's attitudes and characteristics as an interviewer can strongly influence the success or failure of the worker-client relationship.
To do a competent health assessment the health worker needs to develop self-awareness and learn how to communicate in a caring, empathic way.
Respect, empathy and cultural sensitivity for the client are essential for communicating a helping attitude. A health worker can communicate helping attitudes to a client in several ways, including:
- greeting them warmly at the beginning of the interview
- developing trust by sitting slightly forward
- listening carefully
- maintaining eye contact (if this is culturally appropriate)
- using facial expressions that indicate interest
- being aware of appropriate non verbal language
- providing friendly responses
- being relaxed.
The client's perceptions of the health worker's feelings are also important. Communicating warmth, acceptance, and genuineness promotes a high level of trust. A sensitive health worker recognises other barriers to building trust such as:
- racism
- sexism
- other biases
- stereotyping.
Sensitivity to issues of ethnicity, race, gender and age is important for health workers when conducting interviews. Many clients and families will have backgrounds very different from the health worker.
View these images to see some suggestions to help you show sensitivity and build trust when assessing clients.
Expect clients to be unique individuals. It is easy to stereotype culture, race, gender, or age groups, but clients cannot be understood strictly in terms of their particular culture.
During interviews, health workers must take special care to get to know each individual client rather than categorising him or her as a member of one particular group.
Remember that differences in language can be confusing. When clients talk about ‘partners’ or ‘family’ for example, these terms can have various meanings depending on the cultural background and life experiences of the individual being interviewed.
In Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander culture, family is an extended one that includes many members. For gay men and women, the word partner has the special meaning of ‘significant other’.
Explain to the client the purpose of the interview and the health worker's role. Clients may turn up for an interview without understanding its purpose or the role of the interviewer in the helping process.
Confidentiality may also be an important issue for them.
Expect that clients may be different from you. We often begin the interview process wanting to find similarities as a way of building a bridge to them.
When clients prove to be very different, or we cannot understand them, we often want them to change so that they will be easier to manage.