Ineffective Communication In Health Care

According to Oxford Dictionaries, communication is “the imparting or exchanging of information by speaking, writing, or using some other medium.” However this does not tell the full story. Communication involves so much more than this.

In order for communication to be a successful process, the information must be carefully shared in a way that is clear and coherent. Most importantly however, it must be shared in a way that your message is interpreted correctly by the receiver (Rasheed, 2013). This is what we know as ‘effective communication’ and it is extremely important in healthcare settings, particularly around the concept of patient safety.

Unfortunately and unforgivably however, ineffective communication or the omission of communication

One of the main roles of a healthcare worker is to educate, and therefore they must partake in a lot of communication with their patients. This may range from informing a patient about a certain test or procedure, to simply asking them have their bowels moved. However to make this communication effective the healthcare worker must share their message in a clear, informative, and respectful manner. To do this, he/she must be able to translate, what patients call, ‘medical jargon’ into simplified language that the patient can understand. The medical professional must also understand that each patient is unique and comprehends information differently. Therefore he/she must adjust how they communicate with each patient, and avoid assumptive thinking (Cavanaugh and Cohen Konrad,

Unfortunately this is another area that needs improvement in healthcare systems. In many circumstances the healthcare worker will dominate and control the conversation. They say what they need to say and then proceed by asking the patient closed questions, the answer to which are ‘yes’, or ‘no’. This does not give the patient the opportunity to express their thoughts, or ask any questions. For example, the ISQSH survey also stated that a fifth of those surveyed would have liked to ask a question but did not do so (Hunter, 2005). To tackle this issue medical professionals must acquire active listening skills (Rasheed, 2013). There are many elements to this, from nodding to encourage the speaker, to appearing curious and asking the patient further questions about what they are saying. This is vitally important and contributes greatly to a higher patient safety