Opening the Lines of Communication in Healthcare

Using effective communication strategies between healthcare practitioners and patients is essential to ensure high-quality and safe patient outcomes. As health care becomes more complex, the focus for organizations and health care professionals is focused on processes that facilitate clear communication and collaboration, that in turn improves patient safety and outcomes (Rosenstein, Dinklin, & Munro, 2014). Successful collaboration and improved outcomes is directly related to the quality of communication. Effective communication in a healthcare organization engages staff, conveys trust, and sets expectations for accountability (Men, 2014).

Nurse-patient communication requires an understanding of the patient and the experience they may encounter. Good communication is not based on the abilities of a nurse, but their education and experience they may have. Nurses must devote their time to the patient when communicating necessary confidentiality and the nurses should not forget that communication should include who is surrounding the sick person and

Interdepartmental communication and medical errors have both been proven as causes of harm to patients in health care settings. When there are gaps in communications between nurses changing shifts or patient transitions from one department to another, medical errors can occur and cause harm to patients. Even though there has been improvement in recognition of these problems and actions taken to reduce communication gaps and medical errors, there still needs to be more work, especially in individual facilities.

In nursing profession, communication is one of the vital interprofessional collaboration competencies. A slack in communication gap will affect effective teamwork in providing efficient patient care delivery. Without integrated cooperation and effective communication, there will be a delinquency in the healthcare system, resulting in

The American Nurses Association (ANA) “Code of Ethics for Nurses” (ANA, 2001) states: “The nurse promotes, advocates for, and strives to protect the health, safety, and rights of the patient”. This reflects that advocating for the patient directly correlates with the safety and well-being of the patient. The key part to patient advocacy is effective communication. In recent times, there has been a focus on the connection of effective communication between healthcare workers and patient safety. A number of Institute of Medicine reports has brought focus to the severe matter. The reports have emphasized the concern of the lack of communication in the healthcare setting and the resulting negative patient outcomes. (Hanks, 2012a). This goes back to the notion that while many healthcare professionals consider themselves as a working member of a team, we have the natural tendency to work autonomously. Therefore, it is the nurse’s duty to collaborate patient centered care by practicing good communication skills with the entire healthcare team, the patient, and the patient’s family if consent is given to assure patient safety.

In this scenario the nurse is and can be faced with having to communicate with any given person on staff to ensure appropriate quality care. Being part of the interdisciplinary healthcare team and learning how to communicate effectively within this team and encourage others to do the same is one of the many vital responsibilities that a nurse must be able to handle well.

The Hospital environment can offer some practical challenges that could be barriers in communications. Many patients have individual needs and this can impede on a nurses time and emotions. Nurses put in long hours and have a high patient/nurse ratio or shortage of healthcare workers. Nurses/personnel have to deal with emergencies in an already challenging and busy hospital setting. Dealing with patients takes mental acuity and emotional support and sensitivity. Hospital guidelines might not have sufficient communication practices among personnel in place.

Another issue surrounding the delayed recognition of deterioration in hospitalized pediatric patients results from the inability of the healthcare team to efficiently communicate concerns and respond appropriately. In fact, ineffective inter-professional communication and collaboration is one of the most common causes of adverse patient events (Lancaster, Kolakowsky-Hayner, Kovacich, & Greer-Williams, 2015). Effective inter-professional collaboration occurs when healthcare providers of different knowledge and skill can work together constructively to positively influence patient care (Lancaster et al., 2015). Successful collaboration requires all levels of healthcare providers to communicate openly and directly, respect multiple perspectives, and accept personal responsibility for decision making (Lancaster et al., 2015). However, the hierarchical healthcare structure that exists today inhibits effective communication and, subsequently, effective response to concerns (Ennis, 2014). Authoritative environments that result in inadequate communication cultivates distrust, frustration, and hostility within the organization further hindering collaboration

Communication plays a vital role in the healthcare setting, as the relationship with the healthcare professional sets the tone of the care experience and has a powerful impact on patient satisfaction. It is “the shared process in which messages are sent and received between two or more people which are made up of a sender, receiver, and message in a particular context” (cite, date). This essay highlights the importance of, and some common barriers to, effective communication in the healthcare setting. It involves many interpersonal skills such as effective observation, questioning and listening, giving feedback, recognizing and removing barriers.

Nurses are responsible for continuing patients’ care and improving their health outcomes. Before the shift ends, nurses do bedside handover to reduce fragmentation of care and enhance continuity (Kilborn, 2014). Effective communication plays an important role in transferring of patient information between nurses. The two studies (Manias & Watson, 2014; Köberich, 2014) showed that communication problem between nurses and patient leads to the disorganised patient report, interruptions, lack of patient health information, language problem and confusion between the roles of the healthcare team (Manias & Watson, 2014; Köberich, 2014). Bradley and Mott (2014) and Kerr, McKay, Klim, Kelly & McCann (2013) stated that involving patients in decision-making is important part bedside handover as they can make decisions related to their treatment

Describe strategies you gained from the course for improving outcomes of care and patient safety in the setting in which you are engaged in. Provide examples and rationale.

A descriptive study was performed by Hailu, Kassahun, and Kerie (2016) on 341 nurses and 168 physicians to determine the perception of nurses and physician regarding nurse-physician communication during patient care delivery. Findings revealed that nurses reported low perception on their level of communication with the physicians while a very significant gap was observed on physicians perceived their level of communication with nurses. This significant gap suggests that interventions need to be implemented to improve nurse-physician communication and solve mishaps in patient care which was found to be the leading cause of preventable medical errors, patient injuries, increased healthcare costs, complications, and death (Hailu, Kassahun, and Kerie,

There are fewer interactions between nurse and patient due to nurse patient ratio. In public hospital it can be overcrowded leading to increase in nurse workload resulting in time limit and not communicating with patient. Some nurses are there physical but not mentally due to lack of motivation or personal problems . To be a nurse you need to love it in order to provide high quality care. Esmaeili and her team also found out that some physicians self centred they do not think of the patient and for the nurses to provide good quality care their need the whole team to participate.They also found out that some patient are not satisfied with care due to poor quality scope of the nurses as they can not provide solutions to some problems. There is lack of holistic view as this includes focusing on patient and their family’s needs also resolving patient’s issues during hospitalisation and after discharge. Other nurses needs to up date their knowledge and practice (Esmaeili, Cheraghi and Salsali, 2014). Hills found out that sometimes communication can not happen due to tight schedules of nurses, working with difficult patient and staff shortages There is still some health team members who still believe in hierarchy so they do not think its necessary to share or communicate with low ranking staff resulting in errors being

Ineffective communication between health care members can lead to patient harm and medical errors (MacLean, Kelly, Gaddes, & Della, 2017, p. 90). Being able to communicate with all members of the health care team is essential for patient safety.

The Healthy People 2020 initiative includes goals to increase the number of patients who report that their healthcare providers listened to them carefully to 65% and increase the number of patients who report that their healthcare provider explained things so they could understand them to 66% (United States Department of Health and Human Services, 2010). The nursing profession plays an important role in making progress toward these goals through advocacy for effective communication. Being able to effectively communicate with patients is an essential skill for healthcare providers, especially