Understanding the "concept of noise" in mental health care encounters with patients from different cultures

Intercultural provider/patient clinical encounters are often fraught with miscommunication due to many sources of communication noise, resulting in unsatisfactory interactions for both parties and, more importantly, inadequate health care received by the patient. Communication noise refers to influences on effective communication that influence the interpretation of conversations. While often overlooked, communication noise can have a profound impact both on our perception of interactions with others and our analysis of our communication proficiency. Health care would be much improved for people from different cultural backgrounds in the United States if providers and patients were aware of and proactive in addressing the sources of noise that obscure the intended messages transferred from one to the other related to health and appropriate treatment steps. This article will apply a classic communication model, identify key sources of communication noise in intercultural communication and then explore two mental health clinical encounters in which noise nearly resulted in inappropriate treatment of an illness. Through identifying and addressing these sources of noise in the clinical encounter, mental health care providers can develop strategies to improve their communication with patients from different cultures.