Michelle Loubon

Dr Brad­er Brath­waite, re­tired se­nior lec­tur­er in the Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences, says im­proved health com­mu­ni­ca­tion will be the key to bet­ter health for Caribbean peo­ple. She made the com­ment while de­liv­er­ing a re­view on the book Health Com­mu­ni­ca­tion in the Caribbean and Be­yond. The launch took place at the of­fice of St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus prin­ci­pal Prof Clement Sankat, re­cent­ly. The book was edit­ed by Dr God­frey Steele, Se­nior Lec­tur­er and Deputy Dean, Fac­ul­ty of Hu­man­i­ties and Ed­u­ca­tion. Brath­waite said: "The read­er is just a trail­blaz­er in a num­ber of books that must now be pub­lished in the area of health com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­cause one day we may come to ac­cept health com­mu­ni­ca­tion will be the key to bet­ter health for Caribbean peo­ple." Brath­waite added: "The read­er is rel­e­vant when it dis­clos­es the wide range of health com­mu­ni­ca­tion com­po­nents, for ex­am­ple, look­ing at the pub­lic health ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem in Bar­ba­dos in both an his­tor­i­cal and con­tem­po­rary con­text. "It looks at the process of tar­get­ing health ed­u­ca­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions in com­mu­ni­ty projects in rur­al Be­lize. Spe­cial men­tion was a Teen Night event, with em­pha­sis on youth. The book brings a mea­sure of 'Caribbean­ness' to the read­er." Ze­ro­ing on the health com­mu­ni­ca­tion con­cept, she said World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion re­lates not on­ly to the ab­sence of dis­ease but to the at­tain­ment of so­cial well-be­ing.

Brath­waite said: "The com­mu­ni­ca­tion process in­volves the sender, re­ceiv­er, mes­sage and a feed­back loop. It is so sim­i­lar to the ed­u­ca­tion process-the teacher, learn­er, cur­ricu­lum and the as­sess­ment of learn­ing as well as the eval­u­a­tion of an en­tire ed­u­ca­tion process." She iden­ti­fied lan­guage as a key com­po­nent in health ed­u­ca­tion. Dur­ing the year she worked as an Aids ed­u­ca­tor for Carec, she re­alised the lan­guage used in pub­lic health mes­sages would play a piv­otal role in cur­tail­ing the spread of HIV/Aids virus. Brath­waite al­so spoke about the need to teach com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills. She said: "Stu­dents from var­i­ous cul­tur­al back­grounds in their clin­i­cal years must be trained in a Tri­ni set­ting by con­sul­tants in their var­i­ous spe­cial­ties at the bed­side. A for­mal com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills pro­gramme in the hos­pi­tal en­vi­ron­ment has not yet been ven­tured." She added: "Teach­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills in­volves dif­fer­ent method­olo­gies from teach­ing main­ly for cog­ni­tion. The meth­ods would be time and labour in­ten­sive, us­ing role play with sim­u­lat­ed pa­tients, video­tap­ing and re­view of prac­tices and work­shops."

Ku­dos for Steele

Stress­ing the need for ed­u­ca­tion, Brath­waite paid ku­dos to Steele, who lec­tured on Foun­da­tion Cours­es on Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Skills for Health Per­son­nel. It was fur­ther ex­plored in the Chap­ter by Nunes, sub-ti­tled Pro­mot­ing Bet­ter Prac­tice through Ed­u­ca­tion." She al­so con­grat­u­lat­ed Steele and his team on the text. She said: "To me the book was de­ja-vu. It is specif­i­cal­ly rec­om­mend­ed as es­sen­tial read­ing for all med­ical fac­ul­ty across the cam­pus­es and for stu­dents of Cari­mac at Mona Cam­pus. It caters to stu­dents, aca­d­e­mics pro­fes­sion­als, health prac­ti­tion­ers, jour­nal­ists and pa­tients." It fo­cus­es on ar­eas like Med­ical Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Skills Ed­u­ca­tion, Pa­tient Care and Coun­selling, In­for­ma­tion Use and Be­hav­iour and Cam­paigns and Prac­tices. It has schol­ar­ly in­put from Bar­ba­dos, Be­lize, Ja­maica, North Amer­i­ca and T&T.

•Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Press 7A Gibral­tar Hall Road, Mona, Kingston. Pub­lished in 2011