The Power of Bad Communication

This has been on my mind for the past four days, so I thought I should get it out of my mind, and onto the blog.

Tuesday, my wife was having ‘post-pregnancy issues’ – and decided to call her doctor to find out if what was going on with her body was normal.

The nurse responded, “Let me call you back.” Shortly after that call, the nurse called again saying, “How long will it take you to get here? You should come NOW.”

In a panic, my wife immediately called me, and I made a mad dash thru the office to let everyone know that we were headed back to the hospital.

(It’s a trek to the hospital for us. We actually live about 30 minutes from Nashville in no traffic. We thought, for sure, as we left the hospital last Friday that we wouldn’t be making this journey again for a long time! How wrong we were!)

I could tell by my wife’s mood that she was very tense about what could possibly be wrong with her, her blood pressure was rising, and we still had to load up number one son. The drive to the hospital was not any longer than normal, yet, it felt like there was another extended hospital stay at the end of the drive, so neither one of us felt like we wanted to actually arrive at the hospital.

With kid in tow, we proceeded quickly to the third floor, and then proceeded to sit in the waiting room for 15 minutes. We then were shuffled to one of the doctors’ exam rooms.

This is what was said:

I am so glad you could come so quickly. The doctor has two deliveries that could be happening at anytime this afternoon and we wanted to squeeze you in before hand if we could.

Needless to say, as relieved as I was, I also was a bit upset. We had both given up our day to rush to the hospital for what we thought was a medical emergency, only to find out it was just a scheduling issue.

How easily can we cause someone to have a reaction to what we say. If this nurse had explained to my wife on the phone that, ‘the doctor was due to deliver two babies at anytime, and could she come now?’ My wife would have been a much happier camper. I would have been a much happier camper. Her heart rate wouldn’t have been racing. She wouldn’t have thought there was a huge emergency with her body.

This incident reminded me how easy it is to communicate poorly. Many times, I don’t give all the facts, or I don’t communicate the facts, or what I am trying to say, to the receiver. It makes no difference what I think I said if the receiver doesn’t understand. It makes no difference what I said if the receiver responds negatively to what they believed they heard me say.

Am I communicating in such a way so that the people who hear me understand what I am trying to say?