The intercultural scenario I am discussing would be the interaction between a Chinese, Malay, Indian and Latino-American. The issues brought out were the concept of time and the use of right hand to eat.
The Malays and Indians do not use their left hands for anything because they believe the left hand is unclean. They insist on eating with their hands, instead of using cutlery, because they believe food eaten this way tastes much better. On the other hand, the Chinese cannot understand why they have to eat with their hands when there are cutlery available. It can even be considered unhygienic by the Chinese.
The difference in cultural values between the Latino-Americans and Singaporeans is the concept of time. Singaporeans usually value the importance of time and are usually on time. For the Latino-Americans, they are usually not on time and are not apologetic when they are late because it is their social norm.
As you can see, misunderstandings are bound to occur if there is no proper communications between people from different cultural backgrounds. The social norm in one country may be considered taboo in another country. If there is no proper communications, resentment will build up due to the lack of understanding. In view of this, it is necessary to voice out the differences in cultural values so there can be a cultural exchange which will lead to an increase in mutual understanding. Understanding does not necessarily mean agreeing. Understanding just means one knows where the other is coming from. As such, one must be tactful because there is no right or wrong.
For me, I think breakdown in communications is usually due to inaccurate assumptions. For example, humans usually commit the mistake of assuming everyone else must be like him/her. As such, they have a basic expectation of others because they use themselves as a benchmark. However, in reality, everyone is different. For effective communication to occur, the element of mutual discovery with no judgement should ideally be present.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Critique on a reply letter to a complaint email
I am not scanning the letter because the organization wants this to be kept under wraps. As such, I will just manually type out the letter and leave out some confidential details. This entry would be quite long, so bare with me.
"Dear Miss Tan,
I refer to your email dated ___ with regard to the medical management of your maternal grandmother, (Madam G) at ___. I appreciate the opportunity to communicate with you.
We have concluded our investigations and wish to share with you our findings. . . I am concerned to hear about your feedback regarding the quality of nursing care you observed. We have highlighted your observations to the respective ward managers and our Director of Nursing. We will also tighten up the supervision of enrolled nurses at the ward by staff nurses.
With regard to the consent for the blood transfusion, we acknowledge that there was a delay on our part. . . .When a blood transfusion was ordered for on ___ at 1500 hours, (J) was alerted by our staff nurse . . . (J) gave consent for the transfusion and instructed the staff nurse to obtain the patient's signature on the consent form. . . . At 1700 hours, the House Officer together with the staff nurse checked the blood that had arrived in accordance to the hospital's policy. At this time, an explanation was again given to the patient on the need for a blood transfusion. Unfortunately, the consent form was not signed before the transfusion commenced. It was around this time that other relatives arrived and requested for an explanation regarding the blood transfusion. Eventually, the consent form was signed by (S) at 1953 hours.
We sincerely apologise for this oversight. Our Director of Nursing has reinforced to the senior nurses the need for consent prior to the start of blood transfusion. In addition, such consent should be taken from the patient directly unless the patient does not have the mental capacity to give consent. The family member/spokesperson will be kept informed of the clinical progress of the patient. We hope that with these instructions, a similar lapse will not recur.
Once again, we thank you for giving us the opportunity to reply to your concerns and we remain committed to delivering excellent care and service to our patients at ___."
Now I gonna write a short (but I realize it's not that short after all) critique on the above letter according to the 7Cs of writing.
Courtesy -
This letter does enhance the organization's image and improve our relationship. They have very appropriate choice of words and sentence structure, in addition to beautifying the ugly conflict between my cousin and the doctors. If you have noticed, the focus is usually on them or on the issue itself.
Correctness -
This is written in formal English, which is appropriate given that they are representing their organization.
Conciseness -
Personally, this letter is too long for me. Granted that formal language usually uses more words to convey a point and that they want to be as detailed as possible so as to give as clear an explanation as possible, I lost interest in it after a while of reading. This makes me wonder if my entries so far, have been too long that my readers lost interest after a while of reading. Yet, they are forced to finish reading my entries because they are required to post comments!
Clarity -
This letter is very clear. They addressed all my concerns in my email to them (which I suspect is as long as their letter).
Coherence and Cohesion -
This letter runs very smoothly. I like their use of connectors like "In addition", "Eventually", etc.
Concreteness -
They were very specific. The names of people involved and the time at which critical events happened were listed. Maybe this is not seen by you because I omitted these details out due to confidentiality issues.
Completeness -
Very complete. Everything that I need to know, is stated. The events that unfolded were narrated in chronologial order and what went on in the management level were also stated.
Overall, I actually have nothing to pick on in this letter. Does anyone have any recommendations on how this letter can be improved on?
"Dear Miss Tan,
I refer to your email dated ___ with regard to the medical management of your maternal grandmother, (Madam G) at ___. I appreciate the opportunity to communicate with you.
We have concluded our investigations and wish to share with you our findings. . . I am concerned to hear about your feedback regarding the quality of nursing care you observed. We have highlighted your observations to the respective ward managers and our Director of Nursing. We will also tighten up the supervision of enrolled nurses at the ward by staff nurses.
With regard to the consent for the blood transfusion, we acknowledge that there was a delay on our part. . . .When a blood transfusion was ordered for on ___ at 1500 hours, (J) was alerted by our staff nurse . . . (J) gave consent for the transfusion and instructed the staff nurse to obtain the patient's signature on the consent form. . . . At 1700 hours, the House Officer together with the staff nurse checked the blood that had arrived in accordance to the hospital's policy. At this time, an explanation was again given to the patient on the need for a blood transfusion. Unfortunately, the consent form was not signed before the transfusion commenced. It was around this time that other relatives arrived and requested for an explanation regarding the blood transfusion. Eventually, the consent form was signed by (S) at 1953 hours.
We sincerely apologise for this oversight. Our Director of Nursing has reinforced to the senior nurses the need for consent prior to the start of blood transfusion. In addition, such consent should be taken from the patient directly unless the patient does not have the mental capacity to give consent. The family member/spokesperson will be kept informed of the clinical progress of the patient. We hope that with these instructions, a similar lapse will not recur.
Once again, we thank you for giving us the opportunity to reply to your concerns and we remain committed to delivering excellent care and service to our patients at ___."
Now I gonna write a short (but I realize it's not that short after all) critique on the above letter according to the 7Cs of writing.
Courtesy -
This letter does enhance the organization's image and improve our relationship. They have very appropriate choice of words and sentence structure, in addition to beautifying the ugly conflict between my cousin and the doctors. If you have noticed, the focus is usually on them or on the issue itself.
Correctness -
This is written in formal English, which is appropriate given that they are representing their organization.
Conciseness -
Personally, this letter is too long for me. Granted that formal language usually uses more words to convey a point and that they want to be as detailed as possible so as to give as clear an explanation as possible, I lost interest in it after a while of reading. This makes me wonder if my entries so far, have been too long that my readers lost interest after a while of reading. Yet, they are forced to finish reading my entries because they are required to post comments!
Clarity -
This letter is very clear. They addressed all my concerns in my email to them (which I suspect is as long as their letter).
Coherence and Cohesion -
This letter runs very smoothly. I like their use of connectors like "In addition", "Eventually", etc.
Concreteness -
They were very specific. The names of people involved and the time at which critical events happened were listed. Maybe this is not seen by you because I omitted these details out due to confidentiality issues.
Completeness -
Very complete. Everything that I need to know, is stated. The events that unfolded were narrated in chronologial order and what went on in the management level were also stated.
Overall, I actually have nothing to pick on in this letter. Does anyone have any recommendations on how this letter can be improved on?
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