I Don't Understand

One afternoon I was sent to assist at a heath clinic on a college campus with a meningitis patient. I was told the ambulance was in route.   By the time I arrived at the clinic about two minutes later the patient had gone into a coma. The nurse in the treatment room with the patient said the patient was not contagious and I didn’t need a mask or any type of protective gear, as long I didn’t come into contact with any of the patient’s bodily fluids.

Several minutes after my arrival the ambulance arrived. Two paramedics walked into the treatment room pushing a gurney wearing silver suits and helmets that looked like spacesuits. My jaw dropped and I felt panic drift into my being. There was another officer from my department in route to assist me and I contacted him on my portable radio and told him not to respond. One of us being exposed was enough.

After the patient was loaded into the ambulance and taken away I went straight to our local hospital and obtained tablets that I took for several days because I had been exposed to meningitis.  Thankfully I never got sick.

The situation above was a communication problem. There is more than one type of meningitis and no one was sure which type the patient had. The paramedics wanted to be safe in case it was the extremely contagious kind. But I didn’t know all that information at the time.

Communication both verbal and nonverbal is one of the most important things we all do at our workplace, with our families, with our friends, and with others. For communication to be successful the recipient of our message we are trying to communicate must understand what was said and what we meant by what we said.  Do we as a society take the time to be sure other societies understood what we really meant when we said or did something? Wars have been known to start as a result of misunderstandings. Do we as individuals take the time to be sure the things we say and do are understood? I think sometimes were get wrapped up in the fast lives we all lead these days and don't take the time to communicate both verbally and nonverbally with complete understanding.

Until tomorrow,

Sally S