Principles of Interpersonal

and Intercultural
Communication

Louie Fernand D. Legaspi, MHSS, RPh

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A.Y. 2020-2021
Learning Objectives
At the end of this session, the students must be able to:
• Define interpersonal and intercultural communication
• Explain the importance of studying interpersonal and
intercultural communication
• Discuss the principles and elements of interpersonal and
intercultural communication
• Discuss the role of pharmacists in communication

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Interpersonal Communication
• It can be described as one-to-one interaction between two
individuals.
• It is a common but complex practice that is essential in dealing
with patients and other health care providers.

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Setting the Stage
• You are a pharmacist working alone in a community pharmacy.
G.R., a 59-year-old man with moderate hypertension, enters the
pharmacy smoking a cigar. You know G.R. because you attend
the same church. He is a high school principal, has a wife who
works, and has four children. He has been told to quit smoking
and go on a diet. He also has a long history of not taking his
medications correctly. He comes to pick up a new prescription-
an antibiotic for a urinary tract infection. Although he knows
you personally, he is somewhat hesitant as he approaches the
prescription area. He looks down at the ground and mumbles,
“The doctor called in a new prescription for me, and can I also
have a refill of my heart medication?”

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Activity
• For the situation just presented, take a moment now and on a
sheet of paper briefly describe what G.R. might be thinking or
feeling. What clues do you have? Write down what you might
say to him.

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Components of the Interpersonal
Communication Model
• sender
• message
• receiver
• feedback
• barriers

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The Sender
• In the interpersonal communication process, the sender
transmits a message to another person.

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The Message
• In interpersonal communication, the message is the element
that is transmitted from one person to another.
• Messages can be thoughts, ideas, emotions, information, or
other factors and can be transmitted both verbally and non-
verbally.
• Research has found that in some situations 55% or more of a
message is transmitted through its non-verbal component.

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The Receiver
• The receiver receives the message from the sender.

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Feedback
• It is the process whereby receivers communicate back to
senders their understanding of the sender’s message.
• In the interpersonal communication process, individuals are
constantly moving back and forth between the roles of sender
and receiver.

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Feedback
• It can be simple or more complex.
• It allows communication to be a two-way process rather than a
one-way monologue.
• Verbal or non-verbal

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Barriers
• affect the accuracy of the communication exchange
• Watch out for barriers
• Monitor actions of receiver
• Ask questions
• listen

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Barriers affecting the Communication
Process
• Personal Factors
• Verbal Expressions
• Non-verbal Expressions
• Sensory and Emotional Factors
• Environmental Factors

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Personal Factors
• Experience
• Education
• Culture
• Self-concept
• Listening habits
• Pre-occupations & feelings

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Self-Concept

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Johari Window

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Johari Adjectives

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Verbal Expressions
• Language
• Jargons
• Choice of questions and words
• Feedback
• Tone of voice

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Non-Verbal Expressions
• Body position
• Eyes
• Eye contact
• Body movement
• Body posture
• Mouth expression
• Facial expression
• Skin
• General appearance
anger, fear, disgust , surprise, happiness, sadness
• Voice

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Sensory and Emotional Factors
• Body movement
• Stress & anxiety
• Pain
• Mental acuity
• Vision, hearing or speech
• Impairment

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Environment Factors
• Lighting
• Noise
• Distance
• Temperature
• Privacy

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Responsibility of Pharmacists in the
Communication Model
• As a sender, you are responsible for ensuring that the message
is transmitted in the clearest form, in terminology understood
by the other person, and in an environment conducive to clear
transmission.
• To check whether the message was received as intended, ask
for feedback from the receiver and clarify any
misunderstandings.

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Responsibility of Pharmacists in the
Communication Model
• As a receiver, you have the responsibility of listening to what is
transmitted by the sender.
• To ensure accurate communication, you should provide
feedback to the sender by describing what you understood the
message to be.
• Research has found that without appropriate feedback,
misunderstandings occur.
• To become more effective, efficient, and accurate in our
communication, we must strive to include explicit feedback in
our interactions with others.
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Responsibility of Pharmacists in the
Communication Model
• In the roles of both receiver and sender, also be aware of the
sources of interference or barriers to effective communication
that exist and attempt to minimize them.

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Principles of Interpersonal Communication
1. Interpersonal Communication is a
transactional Process

2. Interpersonal Communication is purposeful

• To learn
• To relate
• To influence
• To play
• To help

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 Principles of Interpersonal Communication
You’ve gone out with someone for several months
3. Interpersonal communication is ambiguous and want to reduce ambiguity about the future of
the relationship and discover your partner’s level
of commitment. But you don’t want to scare your
partner. What are some things you can say or do
to find answers to your very legitimate questions?
How would you describe one of your
interpersonal relationships in terms of
symmetrical and complementary interactions?
For example, is the relationship defined by the
differences or by the similarities between you 4. Interpersonal communication may be symmetrical
and the other person? Is there equality between or complementary
you, or is one of you superior? Are you
dependent on each other or independent? Is the
power shared, or is one person in control?

5. Interpersonal communication refers to content and relationship

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Principles of Interpersonal Communication
6. Interpersonal 7. Interpersonal
communication is series of communication is
punctuated events inevitable, irreversible and
unrepeatable

You accidentally refer to your best friend’s

current romantic partner with the name of the
friend’s ex-partner. From both their
expressions, you can tell your friend never
mentioned the ex.
What can you say to get your friend
out of the trouble you just created?

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In Search of the Meaning of the Message
• The interpersonal communication model shows how messages
originate from a sender and are received by a receiver. The
sender delivers the message, and the receiver assigns a meaning
to that message. The critical component in this process is that
the receiver assigns the same meaning to the verbal or
nonverbal message as intended by the sender.

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In Search of the Meaning of the Message
• Words and Their Context
• Congruence Between Verbal and Nonverbal Messages
• Preventing Misunderstanding
• Using Feedback to Check the Meaning of the Message

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Words and Their Context
• In general, individuals assign meaning to verbal and nonverbal
messages based on their past experiences and previous
definitions of these verbal and nonverbal elements.
• An example of this misunderstanding occurs in health care
when we speak in medical terminology that may have different
(or possibly no) meaning to our patients.

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Words and Their Context
• Let us assume that you wish to inform G.R. that his urinary tract
antibiotic will be more effective if taken with sufficient fluid to
guarantee adequate urinary output. You relate that intent in the
following manner, “This medication should be taken with plenty
of fluids.”

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Words and Their Context
• Another important factor is that people assign meanings based
on the context that they perceive the sender is using.

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Words and Their Context
• A 9-month-old baby had to be admitted to the hospital with a
severe infection due to the fact that his mother misunderstood
the labeled instructions for an antibiotic: “Take one-half
teaspoonful three times a day for infection until all gone.” The
mother continued the drug for about three days until the baby
appeared to be getting better. The mother then stopped giving
the antibiotic; a superinfection developed; and the baby was
hospitalized.

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Words and Their Context
• The social context also influences how messages are received
and interpreted.
• Research has shown that if patients perceive pharmacists to be
credible, unbiased providers of useful information, they will
listen and retain more information about their medications. If
they perceive pharmacists to be trustworthy and honest, they
will be more willing to approach pharmacists for assistance.

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Congruence Between Verbal and
Nonverbal Messages
• The meaning of the message may be somewhat unclear if the
receiver senses incongruence between the verbal and
nonverbal messages.

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Examples of Incongruent Messages
• A beet-red-faced patron comes into the pharmacy, raises a fist,
and loudly proclaims, “I’m not angry. I’m just here to ask about a
prescription error.”
• A disappointed pharmacist has tried for hours to convince a
physician to change an obvious error in a patient’s medication.
When asked how he is feeling, he meekly replies, “Oh, I’m just
fine.”
• A patient hands a pharmacist a prescription for a tranquilizer,
then bursts into tears. The pharmacist asks if anything is the
matter, and the patient responds, “No, I’m okay. It’s nothing at
all.”

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Congruence Between Verbal and
Nonverbal Messages
• To avoid this incongruence, as a sender you must be aware of
the nonverbal messages as well as the verbal messages; as a
receiver, you must point out to the sender that you are
receiving two different messages.

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Preventing Misunderstanding
• In the situation involving the baby’s antibiotic prescription, the
label read, “Take one-half teaspoonful three times a day for
infection until all gone.” Unfortunately, the mother interpreted
the message incorrectly.
• The meaning could be clarified relatively easily by rearranging
the position of the last two prepositional phrases (…three times
a day until all gone for infection)

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Preventing Misunderstanding
• To improve the communication process, we must remember
that people assign meanings to messages based on their
background, values, and experiences.
• If other persons have different backgrounds, values, and
experiences, they may assign a different meaning to our
intended message. Many of our problems in communication
occur because we forget that individual experiences are never
identical.

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Preventing Misunderstanding
• Typically, we can anticipate patients’ feelings and their
understanding about the use of drugs.
• Communication breaks down when we have limited common
experiences or do not share the same meaning of certain words
and symbols.
• Thus, a person placed on a medication for the first time has a
different perception than a person who has taken the
medication for several years; or a person of a different gender,
age, or race may have experiences different from ours.

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Preventing Misunderstanding
• A key to preventing misunderstanding is anticipating how other
people may translate your message.
• It may be helpful to determine their experience with drugs in general
and with a particular drug specifically. If they have had positive
experiences previously, their perception of drugs may be different
than if they have had negative experiences. If they have negative
feelings about drugs, then they may be reluctant to discuss the
medication or even to take it.
• We need to ask certain questions to determine these perceptions.
Have you been on this medication before? What have you heard
about this medication? How do you feel about taking this
medication?

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Using Feedback to Check the Meaning of
the Message
• As senders of messages, we should ask others to share their
interpretation of the message.
• In the example of the antibiotic, the pharmacist should have
asked the mother in a nonthreatening manner, “When you get
home, how long are you going to give the medication?”
• In the antibiotic example, the pharmacist who dispensed the
original medication should have asked the mother how she
intended to give the medication to her baby and how long she
would continue to give the baby the medicine. Thus, her initial
perception could have been corrected, and the problem could
have been avoided.

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Using Feedback to Check the Meaning of
the Message
• The receiver can also alleviate some misunderstanding by
offering feedback to the sender. After receiving the message,
the receiver should indicate in some way what she understands
the message to be.

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Statements or Questions that Elicit Feedback
• “I want to be sure I have explained things clearly. Please
summarize the most important things to remember about this
medicine.”
• “How do you intend to take the medication?”
• “Please show me how you are going to use this nasal inhaler.”
• “It is important that I understand that you know how to take
this medication. Now when you get home, how are you going to
take this medication?”
• “Describe in your own words how you are going to take this
medication.”
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Improving Communication Behaviors
• When attempting to change communication behaviors, it is
important to place these potential behavioral changes in
relation to two other concepts: awareness and attitude. A
change in behavior is frequently built on appropriate awareness
and attitudes that are conducive to potential behavior change.

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Improving Communication Behaviors
• Awareness of the communication process centers on two
important concepts: self- awareness and process awareness.

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Improving Communication Behaviors
• Self-awareness is the process of recognizing how you actually
communicate with others using both verbal and nonverbal
messages.
• It is the process of analyzing how you are communicating at the
actual time of the interaction.

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Improving Communication Behaviors
• Process awareness involves analyzing the communication
process itself while it is occurring.

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Improving Communication Behaviors
• As pharmacists, we must review our present communication
behavior and at the same time develop an attitude that
improved communication is important. Effective
communication techniques yield better patient rapport, more
accurate information, optimal patient therapies, greater job
satisfaction, and efficiencies arising from better understanding.

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 Intercultural
Communication
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Intercultural Communication
• Refers to the effective communication between people of
different cultural background
• Refers to communication between people whose cultural
perceptions and symbols systems are distinct enough to alter
the communication event

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 VERBAL PROCESS
PERCEPTIONS
The ways in which
Beliefs, values,
cultures employ
attitudes, world
symbols to portray
views, social
things and
organization
experiences

NON-VERBAL
CONTEXTUAL
PROCESS
ELEMENTS
Shared thought and
Elements of feelings of bodily
Business, education,
healthcare, tourism,
Intercultural behavior, time and
personal relationships
space
Communication
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Why do we study intercultural Communication?

Workplace
Increase Self- Demographic
and Economic
awareness Changes
Globalization

Creative Global and

Problem Intrapersonal
Solving Peace

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 Principles for Effective Intercultural
Communication
• Educate yourself
• Recognize the difference
• Confront your stereotypes
• Reduce your ethnocentrism
• Adjust your communication

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Summary

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References
• Beardsley, R.S., Kimberlin, C.L., and Tindall, W.N. (2012)
Communication Skills in Pharmacy Practice. 6th Ed.
WoltersKluwer/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins
• DeVito, J.A. (2013)The Interpersonal Communication Book.
13th Ed. New York: Pearson’s Education, Inc.

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Thank you.