Transactional Model of Communication

Case study 1: The Nursing Report

While doing clinical rotations at the hospital, we would record a report
regarding our patients just before we left duty. When the next RN would come
on, they would play the recording. We would record information such as their
current status, level of consciousness, what medications were given and
which ones are due. It would get confusing to me at times while listening to
the recordings. I found it helpful to listen to the entire message first, and then
listen to it again while taking notes. I would also pause the recording if I
needed extra time. It was very helpful when the previous nurse didnt ramble,
and was able to talk about one patient at a time.
Transactional communication means that when you are communicating you
are technically making a "transaction". You are making a transaction in the
fact that you have to have a sender and a receiver(page 9 in text). You have
to have two people involved and it is unavoidable and strategic. You are
communicating back and forth and sending signals to encode and decode..
The perceived meaning of the encoder and the decoder in this case study
seems to not be relevant as there were no details in this case study about the
specifics that were talked about in this recording.
The channel that this information was given in this transaction did not seem
to work for both the sender and the receiver. The receiver had a hard time
listening to the recorded message and then had to replay it back and take
notes. The receiver also had feedback about the noise involved. The receiver
found it easier when the sender did not ramble and talked about one patient
at a time.
The two people involved in this "transaction" could improve by giving each
other feedback. They could listen to how the other bests decodes this
information, i.e. writing it down, and try to use that channel of
communication to best improve their shared understanding of the information
that was given about each patient.