Importance of Patient-Nurse Communication

The primary focus in health care is to improve patients’ health status and quality of life. Many times nurses assist in treating or managing all the apparent medical conditions of the patients, but they fail to tackle the underlying causes of the disease due to inadequate patient-nurse communication. Continuing with this idea, Patak et al. (2009) proposed a call to action for nursing administrators to position patient-provider communication as a patient safety-care quality priority within the healthcare organization and incorporate bedside practices that achieve effective patient communication, especially with those most vulnerable to impair communication. Effective patient-provider communication is an essential component of patient care, and for communication to be effective the information must be completed, accurate, timely, unambiguous, and understood by the patient (Patak et al., 2009).

Effective communication between nurses and patients require some very important skills from nurses. Nurses need to make sure that patients truly understand what using simple, common words and avoiding medical terminologies are saying. “Nurses need to recognize and acknowledge the emotional burden and individual concerns of the patients. Contributing factors that perpetuate ineffective patient-provider communication include the lack of a systematic method for nursing assessment, evaluation, and monitoring of patient-provider communication needs and interventions and a lack of standardized training of healthcare providers” (Patak, 2009, p. 372). The authors have thoroughly reviewed research conducted on effectiveness of nurse communication with their colleagues with complex communication needs. Another study conducted by Case, & W...

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Patak, L., Wilson-Stronks, A., Costello, J., Keleinpell, R. M., Henneman, E. A., Pearson, C. & Happ, M. B. (2009). Improving Patient-Provider Communication. A Call to Action. Volume 39, Number 9, pp 372-376.