The Importance of Identifying and Adapting to Patient Health Literacy in Effective Workplace Communication
Name: Georgia Pearson
Student Number: n9994769
Course Code & Name: PYB007 Communication for Healthcare Professionals
Tutor: Michael Rowlands
Tutorial: Wednesday, 1500 – 1700, N518
Word Count:
Date: 10/04/2017
Queensland University of Technology
The Importance of Identifying and Adapting to Patient Health Literacy in Effective Workplace Communication
Effective communication plays an integral role in the workplace of health professionals. Effective communication allows professionals to form and develop relationships with colleagues and patients. I recently had the opportunity to speak to a Specialist Geriatrician, and
…show more content…
Dr. Pearson gave the example that when a patient or a patient’s family is experiencing trouble with communication, he limits the use of medical terminology and instead uses simple, clear explanations with no qualifiers, to deliver the maximum amount of information in a short space of time.
Relating to the Interview Content
Prior to the interview, I had some, but limited, understanding of the importance of adapting your communication to suit a patient’s health literacy. While I have limited experience in the same setting as Dr. Pearson, I do have 2 years’ experience working in a physiotherapy clinic. In the clinic, we came across a very diverse group of clients, and each client understood the information we gave them differently. Dr. Pearson explains that when communicating with colleagues, and other health professionals, he uses more complex, medical terminology – as the person he is communicating with will be able to understand exactly what he is saying. In the physiotherapy clinic, we would do the same, as it allows for complete and clear understanding of what the patient’s condition is, and the treatment they require (Markham, 2013).
Dr. Pearson went on to explain that when he would visit or attend to patients from different cultures, he would use simpler language to still deliver the same information, but in an easier to understand format. Dr. Pearson gave the example that when treating patients with low literacy or brain disorders, he would
Communication in the healthcare field may be a little different for some people. Healthcare requires the communication to have a purpose, and that purpose is revolved around a person’s needs. A patient with good staff communication during
Communication is highly important, especially in an elderly care setting. It is useful in many different ways and situations, for example; if the service user had vision impairments, it is important that the professional speaks loud and clearly pronunciating properly however is not patronising in any way making the service user feel uncomfortable. This gets important information, such as changes to medication, across clearly to the service user without them feeling uncomfortable or unaware.
A medical setting in which a patient feels safe and secure is more likely to create the conditions in which optimal outcomes can be achieved. Part of helping to ensure a patient feels secure is addressing the communication barriers between the provider and the patient. Some of these barriers arise from the use of professional jargon. Surgeons, Physicians, Nurses, etc. work at a fast pace to make sure that every patient is attended to. As this is their profession, medical jargon is used frequently when communicating to each other, figuring out a diagnosis, and coming up with a treatment plan for the patient. But this medical jargon creates a barrier between the healthcare professional and the patient. There can be misunderstandings between the patient and the professional when it comes to diagnoses and treatment plans due to the communication barrier. The professionals commonly use medical terminology to inform the patient of their status and a patient may simply nod their head to be polite. This nod does not necessarily mean that there is a mutual understanding, it could potentially mean that they are overwhelmed and don’t know how else to act in response to long confusing words being directed at them. This is dangerous because a patient could leave the facility not knowing how to appropriately take care of themselves after their procedure/diagnosis. Medical jargon has the potential to cause the patient and medical professional relationship to be both broken and
Communication is the way of exchanging information, receiving and giving a message to someone or more than one person, this is also known as passing information on by visuals, speech,writing,behaviour and signals. In a health and social care setting, Communication is incredibly important because service users needs need to have been met and the messages need to be clear for a person to understand. In Health and Social care settings having effective communication is very vital, as it enables the career to perform their job successfully along their colleague’s whist developing supportive ties with provider user who got here from a distinct historical past, religion and lifestyle. people with communication disabilities are vulnerable to no longer being able to talk effectively with their profession. The specific context which conversation may be defined is one to 1, organization, formal, informal verbal exchange.
The topic of health literacy seems to be a new topic on the scene. It does not seem to be talked about frequently in the social work field, let alone in every day conversation. Lacking health literacy affects many populations, including military recruits and veterans. There are many different theories about how to motivate patients to improve their own health.
Health literacy is both a consumer and public healthcare issue. As a health care provider, it is not only my responsibility to ensure that you understand your health and what is going on
The observation setting exhibited weaknesses related to oral exchange as there was high use of medical jargon and lack of translations services. Individuals with poor literacy skills can be vulnerable to misunderstanding and forgetting health information (Roter, 2011). Medical jargon is a substantial contributor to patients’ confusion and lack of comprehension of health information (Roter, 2011). The physician and staff at this particular setting used complex medical terms with patients. For example, when interacting with my family member, whose primary language is not English, the physician used the terms reflux and endoscopy without further elaborating on the meaning of the terms. As individuals can feel humiliated or embarrassed due to low literacy levels, they can be unsatisfied with health visits and are less likely than their counterparts to make informed health decisions (Roter,
Effective communication in the medical industry is imperative; it is a mode of being able to decipher ones’ meaning. Myrna and Danielle Lafleur Brooks state that, “Using medical terms to communicate allows for a concise and accurate communication. For example, using the medical term osteoarthritis, which means inflammation of the bone and joint, offers clear and concise written or verbal communication using one word instead of six” (p. 3). The providers, nurses, and healthcare management staff have a duty to be on one accord; if they fail, the consequences of not using common terminology, vocabularies, and the classification system could be enormous. Too often medical errors occur placing the patients’ life at stake. These medical errors could
There is often a language gap between the Lay persons, often referred to as Consumers and health care professionals. The two groups may use different sets of terminology or expression for the same medical concept or the same medical problem. Studies suggest that lay people have difficulty comprehending medical jargon used by medical professional and that always deters from effective health information seeking on the Internet and communication between patients and their health care providers.
The major priority for UK National Health Service(NHS) is the effective communication with patients and involve them in the decisions of their health care(1). To enable patients to make informed decision, patients must be given clear and sufficient information, in a way they can understand(2). The main essence of effective communication is by discussion tailored to individual’s situation.
It’s important that all Health Professionals have high degree of competencies to ensure that patients receive the highest quality care. Two competencies: Professionalism and Communication are pivotal for all Health Professionals. As such, many Health Professionals continually face many challenges and difficulties in a daily basis. One common challenge that many professional face, is delivering ‘bad news’ to patients about their limited choices in treatments and expenses of these treatments. Thus, in this difficult situation, the Health Professional can use a variety of verbal communications skills to maintain a high standard of communication and professionalism to deliver high quality care to the patient.
In this case study, there are two problems which caused confusion between the mother of a young boy who was sick and the Doctor. These include language barrier and understanding field expressions (the mother of the sick child did not understand the meaning of the expressions used in the health field). For example, when the doctor stated that, “we’ll try something a little different”, he was not telling her to stop giving the sick child the medication which was recommended for him. Thus, this caused miscommunication between them.
With 47 million people in the United States unable to speak English and 21 million people with limited English proficiency (LEP), the issue of inadequate communication has become a considerable problem for healthcare providers (U.S. Department of Commerce Economics and Statistics Administration, 2003). This does not account for the thousands of Americans who have hearing loss and use American Sign Language (ASL) as their primary form of interaction (Mitchell, Young, Bachleda, & Karchmer, 2006). “Communication with patients is essential to providing quality medical care” (Bernard et al., 2006, p. 355). All patients deserve quality healthcare and these populations are no exception.
When it comes to actually trying to implement and promote a new program across a number of different healthcare professionals at the organization, we have to consider how we will be able to reach all of them. We will start this process by choosing and creating a group of advocates who can get to each individual employee. By having a diverse group of people advocating for the new plan to tackle health literacy through our app, we will be able to connect with each and every person who is apart of the organization. Of those advocates there needs to be a leader, supporters and people who actually will do the groundwork. The leader would be someone who basically makes the decisions when it comes to influencing the people. The supporters are
“The two words 'information ' and 'communication ' are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through.” While Challenges in communication can be fixed, Challenges in communication occur because of the lack of knowledge because being able to talk to the patient to where they are able to understand, language barriers, and different ages requiring different communication skills. Sometimes healthcare workers often forget that the patients are regular human beings that are going to the doctor because they are told so because they do not know the language of healthcare.