When we think of ‘tuning into our clients’, our most obvious attention point is our clients’ verbal messages i.e. – what they are actually saying to us in words. Particularly for our objective data collection as health professionals, understanding our clients’ verbal messages is essential.
When we are listening to our clients talk, it can be useful to consider these three areas of experience that our clients may be verbally describing:
What they are thinking
How they are feeling
What they are doing
As Dietitians, our training tends to focus on recording and analysing very specific aspects of data within the frame of what the client is doing. For example – when do you eat?, what do you eat?, what is your body doing? (symptoms, bloods etc) what medication do you take?…doing doing doing doing………
This data is often very important, particularly when we are new to the work. Typically we need this data to assess aspects of nutritional quality, nutrients, metabolic response and how the human body seeking our assistance is operating.
So what’s the problem with honing in like this on the ‘doing data’ ? Well, when it comes to working with eating behaviors it often misses the point..read on to find out more
#active listening
