Communication is an essential and constant exchange of information between the patient and health professional with full understanding occurring on both camps (The Joint Commission, 2010, p. 1). It is one of the major activities done by healthcare staff across diverse settings (Redfern, Brown, & Vincent, 2009). Research shows that communication breakdown is one, if not the leading cause, of medical errors (Kohn L., 1999). For instance, out of 258 malpractice claims which led to patient harm, nearly 25 % was due to failures in communication (Greenberg, Regenbogen, & Studdert, 2007). 61 % of 176 incident reports to the Australian Incident Monitoring Study in Intensive Care resulted from communication breakdown (Beckmann, Gillies, Berenholtz, Wu, & Pronovost, 2004). According to the World Health Organization, lack of communication and coordination is the number one global research priority area in developed countries (Bates, Larizgoitia, Prasopa-Plaizier, & Jha, 2009).
A high-risk area for communication breakdown is the Emergency Department (ED), which can be highly intense and complex due to factors such as crowding and time constraints. For example, Redfern & colleagues (2009) discovered that there were 21 communication steps occurring when a patient is admitted in the ED, with each step identified to be a risk for at least one failure. The nursing documentation phase was revealed to be the most error-prone, which in addition to the other steps, resulted in loss of information and waste of time (Redfern, et al., 2009).
With these in mind, there has been a growing urgency to establish a patient safety culture. According to Sammer & colleagues (2010), a patient safety culture is encouraged when the healthcare setting seeks ...
... middle of paper ...
...9.01.006
The Joint Commission. (2010). Advancing Effective Communication, Cultural Competence, and Patient- and Family-Centered Care: A Roadmap for Hospitals. Retrieved March 1, 2012, from http://www.jointcommission.org/assets/1/6/ARoadmapforHospitalsfinalversion727.pdf
Vardaman, J. M., Cornell, P., Gondo, M. B., Amis, J. M., Townsend-Gervis, M., & Thetford, C. (2012). Beyond communication: The role of standardized protocols in a changing health care environment. Health Care Management Review, 37(1), 88-97.
Wagley, L., Newtown, S. (2010). Emergency Nurses' Use of Psychosocial Nursing Interventions for Management of ED Patient Fear and Anxiety. Journal of Emergency Nursing, 36(5), 415-419.
Woodhall, L., Vertacnik, L., McLaughlin, M. (2008). Implementation of the SBAR communication technique in a tertiary center. Journal of emergency nursing, 34(4), 314-317.
To create a communication strategy equipment differences must be included. The differences hinder productivity due to the fact that protocol is tailored to the equipment at the hospital. Mothiba, Dolamo, and Lekhuleni (2008) observed that in most meetings managers were not incorporating the staff at a functional level (p.43). By including staff from the outpatient clinic in meetings, protocol could b...
Patterson, Grenny, McMillian & Switzler (2005), gave a perfect example of a patient going in for a tonsillectomy. The patient woke with part of her foot missing, while none of her tonsils were removed. In this case, there were seven other people in the OR that day, each wondering why the surgeon was working on the foot, they said nothing. People were afraid to speak up, the crucial conversation didn’t have the chance to begin. As a nurse, it is part of our job to communicate with doctors and those above and around us. If nurses are able to communicate effectively, the flow and shared pool of knowledge can increase a group’s ability to make better decisions and utilize all resources
Understanding that all patients needed to be treated justly and given the opportunity to make decisions in their care is important. Not causing harm and preventing them from harm is also the duty of health care workers. These ethical principles are essential to keep in mind with interdisciplinary communication. Ineffective communication has been associated with medical errors, patient harm, and increase length of stay. Failure to communicate properly has been associated with 79% of sentinel events (Dingley, Daugherty, Derieg & Persing, 2008). Good communication has been shown to improve patient satisfaction, increase in patient safety, as well as a decrease in health care costs (Paget et al.,
Cultivating teamwork is vital in the fast-moving pace of the Emergency Department. One of the most important ways to cultivate this process is through developing a plan of communication with the team. According to L.J. Hood, communication is “…the dynamic interaction between two or more persons in which ideas, goals, beliefs and values, feelings, and feelings about feelings are exchanged. Even very brief communication exchanges may change all involved parties” (Hood, 2014, P.81). In many scenarios some nurses and staff members are unwilling to be those team players that are needed in a busy nursing unit, and many times nurses and staff will not communicate professionally at all. In these situations, some nurses and staff will require coaching sessions on how to communicate, and in worst case scenarios some nurses and staff, who are unwilling to communicate professionally, will be asked to leave the team
To start off, the article’s introduction states that one of the leading causes of medical error and patient harm is due to ineffective communication of health care professionals. Specifically the article states, “A review of reports from the Joint Commission reveals that communication failures were implicated at the root of over 70% of sentinel events.”(Dingley, 2008). So basically, 70% of circumstances
Creating a Culture of Safety. A culture of safety includes psychological safety, active leadership, transparency, and fairness. As a health care professional, I can create a culture of safety by having a positive attitude and creating an environment within the team that feeds off that optimistic and encouraging behavior. In addition, I can contribute to a culture of safety by using effective communication, the “Fairness Algorithm” to differentiate between system error and unsafe behaviors, and by being respectful and approachable to all my fellow coworkers and patients.
For this reason, it is imperative that individuals improve communication among these stakeholders. In the course of 4days in a hospital, a patient can come into contact with about 50 different employees including nurses, technicians and physicians. As a result, for effective clinical practice, critical information MUST be passed on with complete accuracy. According to Rosenstein & O’Daniel 2008, some of the obstacles to Interprofessional Collaboration and Communication include Gender, hierarchy, differences in languages and jargon, the diverse levels of preparation, qualifications and status, the complexity of the care, the historical Interprofessional and Interprofessional contentions, differences in professional routines and agenda, the emphasis on quick decision-making, the fear of diluting one’s professional identity among others. Additionally, those who have the most barriers tend to be physicians and nurses. Despite their numerous interactions in one day, they have differing perceptions about their responsibilities and roles concerning the requirements the patient may have so they end up having different goals for the patient. Due to the ethnic diversity
Communication is cited as a contributing factor in 70% of healthcare mistakes, leading to many initiatives across the healthcare settings to improve the way healthcare professionals communicate. (Kohn, 2000.)
Fierce healthcare reported sometime in June of 2012 that hospitals across the country had received safety report cards from one Leapfrog group. They reported that most facilities got a C or below in the rankings. The report also showed that the biggest hospitals such as the Henry Ford Hospital in Michigan barely got a passing grade. The report cards were meant to inform patients and also to motivate improvements in patient safety, they were faced with a lot of criticism and controversy especially from hospitals that did not pass. This paper will discuss the controversy facing patient safety in the U.S. It will also analyze the effects of the issue and the solutions suggested and currently in place to solve the issue.
Communication encompasses a wide range of processes such as the exchange of information, listening, posing of questions (Fleischer et al., 2009) or use of body language. In a healthcare environment where there are constant interactions among nurses, doctors, patients and other health professionals, professional and effective communication is important in ensuring high quality healthcare standards and meeting the individual needs of patients.
Poor Communication between Physician and Nursing – To optimize nurse-physician communication both need to apply patient centered cultural change; in particular, to use structured communication tools such as Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation (SBAR), and supportive technology that is system wide, for example electronic medical record (EMR). (B. Schmidt, 2012).
In a culture of safety and quality, all employees are focused on upholding quality in providing safe care. In order to promote patient safety in the hospital setting there should be an exhibition of teamwork irrespective of the different leadership positions. However the leaders show their obligation to quality and safety, and set capacities for their employees to perform a committed and critical role in assuring patient safety.
In the provision of a high quality care, many factors influence the way it is provided; however, IC is crucial. A healthy work environment would result from open communication among the staff, it would increase the employees and patients’ level of satisfaction and sense of well-being. Good communication is the cornerstone for the IC, it is a complex process which requires to develop some skills to learn how to transmit some information. One of the most common factors leading to medical errors, are due to miscommunication, sometimes because the message is not clearly sent, and others because it is not clearly received or it is misunderstood (Danna, 2015). In terms of communication non-verbal communication must be taken into consideration as well; body language, facial expressions, use of space, and touch, entail conscious or unconscious movements and gestures, also impacts the communication among the staff and
Keeping patients safe is essential in today’s health care system, but patient safety events that violate that safety are increasing each year. It was only recently, that the focus on patient safety was reinforced by a report prepared by Institute of medicine (IOM) entitled ” To err is human, building a safer health system”(Wakefield & Iliffe,2002).This report found that approx-imately 44,000 to 98,000 deaths occur each year due to medical errors and that the majority was preventable. Deaths due to medical errors exceed deaths due to many other causes such as like HIV infections, breast cancer and even traffic accidents (Wakefield & Iliffe, 2002). After this IOM reports, President Clinton established quality interagency coordination task force with the help of government agencies. These government agencies are responsible for making health pol-icies regarding patient safety to which every HCO must follow (Schulman & Kim, 2000).
The nurse who I assisted to ambulate this patient was much more knowledgeable about the strategies developed to communicate with this patient than I was. When the nurse communicated with this patient, she spoke directly to the patient where the patient was able to ...