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Ineffective Communication Assignment

Decent Essays

Introduction: Ineffective communication is a prominent contributor to patient harm in hospitals. Recently, there has been a growth of research that indicates that clinical handover is a critical site for communication errors, that can subsequently lead to patient harm. According to Eggins & Slade (2015), a recent European Commission project recognized handover communication to be responsible for 25% to 40% of adverse events. This suggests that there is ineffective communication at some point during the handover period. Clinical handover can be defined as the transfer of accountability and or responsibility for patient care from one provider or a team of providers to another (Eggins & Slade, 2015). Thus this topic is of great interest as I have witnessed ineffective communication during the handover period that had the potential to become an adverse event, whilst on a clinical placement. For that reason, a quality improvement initiative of bedside handover should be implemented to reduce the risk and potentially prevent patient harm. This essay will articulate and justify a healthcare quality improvement initiative based on observations seen out on clinical placement. Firstly, it will express and give reason to the quality improvement initiative of bedside handover; it will then apply Kurt Lewin’s 3-Step Model for Change theory whilst using the initiative of bedside handover and finally, propose an evaluation plan to see the effectiveness of the quality improvement

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