Poor Communication Among Healthcare Professionals: Article Analysis

Hi Marie, I could not agree more with you that miscommunication in medical field can cost a life. As medical professionals, we have to be vigilant to what is going on with our patients or residents. Personal issues should not interfere in providing care. However, there are instances that personal issues get in the way of patient care. I believe that your co-worker must have considered you a threat; otherwise she would have expounded her handoff report. Healthy competition at the workplace usually promotes improvement and should not cost or compromise a patient’s life. Thanks for the post. Alma

According to Barry (2014), the Joint Commission has acknowledged the severity of complications associated with communication mistakes, for as much as 70% of adverse medical events, 75% of which lead to patient death, are a result of communication breakdowns. Barry (2014) also states that instances of miscommunication cause over two-thirds of adverse effects among patients. As noted by Malekzadeh, Mazluom, Etezadi, and Alireza (2013), as much as 69% of medical errors are preventable in nature and the fact that these issues still plague the field of healthcare in the 21st century is quite perplexing. Therefore, it is the goal of this charter to identify means and ways in which hand-off discrepancies may be minimized and further eliminated, by implementing a tool that will drastically decrease the percentage of handoff errors resulting from a breakdown of communication.

The research study conducted to eliminate miscommunication between healthcare professionals had been conducted by using Situation, Background, Assessment and Recommendation (SBAR) communication model. The authors clearly expressed the aim, background, methodology, and result in appropriate manner. The critique of this article on different aspects analysed on method of data collection, sample and design, statement purpose and problem, review

There are a number of elements that are essential for productive inter-professional teams for positive patient outcomes, the most important being communication. Bull & Brown (2012) describe communication as a two way process, for example information can be transmitted, but communication has to be shared, with Vuuren & Elving (2008) further adding that it creates a mutual understanding between parties when used appropriately. Not only is communication important to provide a positive patient outcome but Daly et al. (2003) state that to be effective, communication should be regular, timely, honest, clear, interactive and easy to understand with the opportunity for two way communication. Effective communication skills lead into another key element,

There is no such thing as a single provider for a patient in healthcare. There are multiple providers involved in the care of the patient, from lab tech to nurses to specialists. It involves a great deal of communication skills to communicate the needed care to the inter-professional teams. Miers and Pollard (2009) stated that “successful collaboration is not achieved easily, however, and barriers such as professional divisions and hierarchies, stereotyping, and differing value systems have been widely reported” (p. 31). Each member of the inter-professional teams has their own values, characteristics, specialties, and point of views as how to care for the patient. Thus, disagreements could happen amongst the providers and as such should be handled professionally. However, no matter what the disagreements are, it should be on how to ultimately provide the best care for the patient. The use of effective communication amongst the providers is helpful in delivering timely and efficient patient care.

Your article, "Communications in Healthcare" does a great job in discussing the challenges that can arise in the healthcare industry. The article discusses that there are opportunities for more effective communication in stating, “Currently, health care practice and education fall short of equipping providers and consumers with the abilities to effectively communicate with each other” (Schwartz, Lowe, Sinclair, 2010, p. 1.) I agree that training and developing the health care industry is important to enhance patient care. For example, I work at a hospital and it seems like almost every quarter, we are required to take communication and customer service classes. These classes allow for adequate training of how miscommunication can

Poor communication or failure in communication in the perioperative area leads to errors, accounting for 41%-91% of adverse events in the operating theatre (Marks et al. 2014). Theatre environment is fast paced and complex, and this may lead to the breakdown in communication which can cause delay in surgery, patient inconvenience and errors in procedure, hence reducing the quality of care (Cvetic 2011). The senior nurse had very effectively communicated with the surgeon and the junior nurse, which was a significant factor in allowing the surgery to run smoothly when she had to take over. Communication is an integral component of good teamwork, which is the heart of delivering optimum care. Teamwork is a skill, group of people working together to achieve a common goal (Shields & Flin 2013). A dysfunctional team will increase the chance of misunderstandings, poor commitment and lack of confidence and respect, hence leading to the disintegration of the objective of optimum patient care (The Royal College of Surgeons of England (RCSENG) 2014). Furthermore, humans are prone to error, and along with the complexity of the operating theatre, teamwork and communication is important to identify and convey the possible hazards, as to sustain patient safety (Plaza 2015). As part of this teamwork, the senior nurse was able to identify the distress of the junior and was very vigilant in her actions, as to aid her, hence preventing possible adversity to the patient, which is the common

During the course of a 4-day hospital stay any particular patient may interact with up to 50 different hospital employees, many of these in a professional manner (Apker et al, 2006). This significant number of professional to patient communication occurrences can potentially cause vital information to be spread among dozens of different health care professionals. Given that the individual health care professional may have limited professional-to-professional communication. The necessity arises in which communication strategies and models need to be introduced to ensure that collaboration can occur between these all the healthcare professionals involved during any given patients stay. Communication errors are frequently responsible for medical errors such as potentially fatal medication errors (Murphy, 2010). Therefor poor professional communication can directly be linked to poor patient outcomes. In an attempt to reduce occurrences strategies such as the use of communication models have been progressively introduced into the healthcare system to insure that effective communication is commonplace amongst health care professionals.

Medical error is a major problem that take place in the healthcare system in today’s society. Medical errors in hospitals are the third main cause of death in United States killing 44,000 people per year due to medical errors. Studies show that poor communication in medical fields has cost up to 1.7 billion dollars. Miscommunication is the core for this error, failure to clear communication can guide to serious complication, such as serious problems for patients and deaths. This Mistakes usually happen when there is a miscommunication between the nurses and the doctors or between patients and experts. The three common errors, which take place in the medical system are, miscommunication about patient condition between the doctors and nurses, Shift change between workers or transferring of patients to a different hospital and the third one is lack of enough practice and somehow negligence.

Furthermore it specifically highlights that “Effective communication between sectors is imperative in achieving the best possible care” and that “Good communication between professionals and patients is especially important”. The report expands on the aspect of communication stating:

In the medical field, poor communication between doctors and patients have seem to be a problem. This can bring false information to the patients. Doing this can bring chaos and other threatening things to the medical industry. Some solutions may help prevent any of these problems. Improving the communication skills with doctors and patient can help with that. Problem

Good communication is essential in health care. Good communication promotes better patient outcomes and satisfaction. According to the Institute for Healthcare Communication (2011), the patient perception of the quality of the healthcare that was provided for them was significantly relied on the quality of their communications between their healthcare personal. The health care provider needs to know how to communicate effectively to obtain subjective information by making the patient comfortable. When the care provider has ineffective communication, it can cause

Communication is an important tool in providing high quality, safest and cost effective care. Communication prevents costly errors, streamlines patient care to prevent delays, and demonstrates a united front among members of the health care team. According to the Joint Commission, nearly 60 percent of medical errors are a direct result of communication breakdown. Communication breakdown can be caused by many factors. Time is a major factor in communication breakdown. Work environments characterized by high patient acuity and staffing shortages create additional stress that contribute to communication breakdown. Advances in technology to increase quality and efficiency have also a part in communication breakdown (Flicek, 2012). The increasing complex needs of patients, seismic shifts in healthcare systems and explosion of medical knowledge demand for more effective communication. Today’s health care models are focused on maintaining health rather than responding to acute illness. A team-based approach that is centered on close collaboration among all types of providers from across the care continuum brings improved patient outcomes. As a result, to achieve the triple aim of improving quality, enhancing the patient experience and lowering healthcare costs, an improved communication strategy is essential (Deland, Gordan, & Kelly, 2015). Various communication modalities such

Communication plays a major role in the medical field, but it's also one of the weaknesses of the medical field. Lack or poor communication is not being understood or not being understood at all. Both the staff and the public have been a major impact by the misleading of communication in the field.

Miscommunications or errors in communication are a leading cause of serious medical errors. Medical errors then lead to preventable adverse events, which may include death or injuries to the patients. It is said that communication errors occur during the hand-off of patient care from one provider to another (Starmer, Spector, Srivastava, West, Rosenbluth, Allen, Noble, Tse, Dalal, Keohane, Lipsitz, Rothschild, Wien, Yoon, Zigmont, Wilson, O’Toole, Solan, Aylor, Bismilla, Coffey, Mahant, Blankenburg, Destino, Everhart, Patel, Bale, Spackman, Stevenson, Calaman, Cole, Balmer, Hepps, Lopreiato, Yu, Sectish, & Landrigan, 2014).