Welcome to tweetchat 3 of 5 covering a variety of topics exploring how we help our internationally recruited nurses to #StayAndThrive 

The #StayAndThrive project is an opportunity for us to understand contributing factors impacting wellbeing, clinical effectiveness, and a sense of belonging both at home and at work. Following on from understanding these factors we'll look to discuss how we as individuals and organisations can improve the short and long-term living and working conditions to help our international nurses #StayAndThrive. 

You can see all 5 of the tweetchats listed here.

How important is communication? Do we really understand each other?

On the surface communication is simple, but take into account that body language accounts for *70%* of communication, and spoken words *30%* does what you see and hear mean the same? Add in cultural differences and it can be very confusing.

Did you know...

• In certain cultures to show respect and that you are listening you fold your arms
• In other cultures to show respect and that you are listening you look down and don’t make eye contact

…think about how these actions would be interpreted in the UK?

• How do we show respect and that we are listening?

How are we as employers, colleagues, and peers supposed to know and understand all of this?

And we haven't even started talking about talking yet!

You've only got to move a county or two and you may well be surprised that what you were advised not to call patients in a previous place, such as Love, Petal, Duck or Chicken is very calming for patients in your new location?

In India to be called a chicken is very offensive. So when a nurse from India moved to the UK and was repeatedly greeted with ‘Hello chicken’, it is understandable that this made them very upset, wondering what they had done to be called a chicken!

Whilst we may understandably focus on ensuring "transactional communication"is up to speed there is a whole raft of unspoken communications that we pick upon as part of our patient/colleague interactions that are very unique to the UK and to some generations too. 

The UK is one of the largest diverse countries in the world, with the NHS caring for and employing people of multiple nationalities. This provides us with an amazing opportunity to learn and understand each other so we can communicate better.

So, on this chat we'll be asking the following questions:

• Why is being a great communicator important to nurses?

• How can we help prepare our international nurses and our wider workforce to be great communicators?

• How can we ensure that the voices of our International colleagues are heard?

• What tools can we provide our international colleagues with to help them grow in confidence, supporting their communication, which would help not only with patient care but also leadership development?

• What best practice have you seen in supporting international nurses to be great communicators?

• How would you positively point out when communication skills may need developing?

• How can we help our International colleagues to recognise local accents/dialects?

• How would you define being a good communicator?

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