In the article Advances in Patient Safety: New Directions and Alternative Approaches, the authors go into depth about the ways that all the health disciplines, including social work, can use interprofessional communication effectively and efficiently to make sure that all the patient’s safety, health, mental, and emotional needs are being met. 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 …show more content…
Later in the article it goes on to say that in some circumstances, nurses, social workers, and pharmacists were too intimidated by the physicians to say anything about anything that they were questioning. I believe this plays a role in the systematical hierarchy that may be set forth in the health care professional environment. Another large factor in the ineffective communication between disciplines is that all of the disciplines have varying viewpoints of what the patients need first and last and because of this, other disciplines are unaware of what the group task may be instead of what their personal diagnoses of the problem are. Other factors that were listed in the article are limited opportunities for regular synchronous interaction throughout their busy daily schedules and unpredictable environment as well as differences in …show more content…
This article points out many of the techniques that were talked about in the IPE Tegrity lectures. Some interventions that are used to increase communication skills are provide effective interprofessional communication are the SBAR, team huddles, and multidisciplinary rounds using daily goal sheets. To briefly describe each, the SBAR is a standardized means for communication in patient situations. It asks these four questions, “What is going on with the patient,” “What is the clinical background or context”, “What do I think the problem is”, and “What do I think needs to be done for the patient”(Dingley, 2008). This is used by all health care disciplines, hereby ideally eliminating hierarchy between the physician and the other disciplines. Team huddles are quick pow wows that set the flow of the rest of the day. In the article, it states that these team huddles result inlet interruptions during the rest of the day and immediate clarification of issues (Dingley, 2008). They have specific guidelines to make sure that they run as effectively as possible as well. Lastly, multidisciplinary rounds increase patient-centered communication and include any and all providers involved in the patient’s care. These are primarily focused on open communication, decision making,
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.)
Research has shown that ineffective communication between nurses and physicians may adversely affect hospital readmissions and other outcomes such as length of stay (Manojlovich, 2010). This research paper is a theory paper developed from a review of the literature on nurse and physician communication. In the scenario, the patient was negatively affected by the intravenous medications because the fluids ran late into the night and disturbed the patient’s sleep-wake cycle. The other patient who was discharged had a new occurrence of loose bowel movements. Because no further testing was done on the discharged patient, this patient was at risk for readmission if their loose bowel movements are indicative of a new disease process. This demonstrates irresponsibility for both the resident and nurse because they were unable to collaboratively participate in providing patient centered care. When health care professionals fail to collaborate, patient care is negatively affected. Therefore, interprofessional communication is essential for promoting effective
rofessionals from different disciplines collaborating to provide care to patients. Effectively coordinated and collaborative inter-professional teams are essential to the care and treatment of patients (Rowlands & Callen, 2013; Doyle, 2008; Ruhstaller, Roe, Thürlimann & Nicoll, 2006; Simpson & Patton, 2012, p. 300). Communication is a process of conferring information between individuals through use of speech, writing or various other means, and is critical to the success of a multidisciplinary team (MDT) (Higgs, McAllister & Sefton, 2012, p. 5; Rowlands & Callen, 2013; Sargeant, Loney & Murphy, 2008). An MDT must use multiple strategies to enhance communication and ensure their success (Doyle, 2008). An effective MDT generates opportunities that benefit healthcare, which is the reason for the recent dominance of inter-professional care in health practice (Simpson & Patton, 2012, p. 300; Rowlands & Callen, 2013). Many barriers prevent effective communication within inter-professional teams. Lack of communication within MDTs presents challenges to their success, leading to numerous consequences, including the failure of the MDT (London Deanery, 2012; Sargeant et al, 2008). Communication between professionals is the key factor underpinning the potential success or failure of inter-professional teams, the outcome of the functioning of MDTs will either benefit or impair care of patients.
Interprofessional collaboration, interprofessional education, and integrated service delivery models are becoming more frequently utilized by social systems. Collaboration amongst professionals is touted as a vital method for cultivating positive outcomes, client safety, and service delivery cohesion while addressing human and economic resource deficits (Baldwin, 1996; Reeves & Freeth, 2002; Wee, Hillier, Coles, Mountford, Sheldon, & Turner, 2001). While not explicitly recognized, group work and group processes are the underpinning of interprofessional collaboration. Interprofessional collaboration can be structured as an educational, therapy, psychoeducational, task, support, self-help, community organizing, or empowerment/liberation group (Furman, Bender, & Rowan, 2014) depending on its purpose.
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.
The more health care professionals collaborate, the more knowledge is used, and patient safety can be maintained. Communication is related to interprofessional collaboration, because health care professionals collaborate with each other about the patient through communicating with each other. “Collaboration among nurses, physicians, and other members of the care team can improve the outcomes of care for patients” (Engel & Prentice, 2013; IOM, 2010).
“Physicians and other health care professionals all agree on the importance of effective communication among the members of a health care team. However, there are many challenges associated with effective interprofessional (between physicians and other health care providers) communication, and these difficulties sometimes lead to unfavourable patient outcomes” (Canadian Medical Protection Association, 2011 p. 11).
Effective communication between patient and clinician is an important aspect to patient care. Proper communication has a direct positive impact on patient care and adversely poor communication has a direct negative impact on patient care. I will define the seven principles of patient-clinician communication and how I apply these communications with my patients. I will also describe the three methods currently being used to improve interdisciplinary communication and the one method that my area of practice currently uses. Then, I will explain the ethical principles that can be applied to issues in patient-clinician communication. And Lastly, the importance of ethics in communication and how patient safety is influenced by good or bad team communication.
Openness and effective communication between team members ensure each member is aware of their roles and responsibilities within the inter-professional team as well as the roles of the other members, and can reveal possible conflicts in interest, which can then be attended to before they pose risk of affecting the care and treatment of the patient.
Healthcare is a dynamic, ever-changing environment. The complex circumstances around daily conversations that encompass life-threatening decisions are critical. In order to deliver high quality care, individuals must be able to communicate effectively. In the perfect world of communication, everyone receives the exact same information and is able to respond the exact same way. Unfortunately, communication breakdown is a prevalent issue among hospitals. On any given day of the hospital arena, multiple interactions take place. Some of the dialogue is planned, and some is not. While hospital departments are living in different silos within the same organization, the cultures may vary among the employees. Hospital leadership fosters the importance of collaboration within the organization and depends on the employees to ultimately drive the process. In order to overcome communication barriers in the workplace, conversations must occur. Engaging in daily face-to-face meetings with employees increases positive work culture, morale and overall productivity.
The United Kingdom National Health Service (NHS, 2012) lunched the 6 Cs of nursing to promote interprofessional communication in the National Health Service. However, Beach and Oates (2014) suggest that content such the medical terms used by other professional may limit the interprofessional communication. Standing (2010) suggests that the interprofessional care promote quality care and person centre care because different professionals communicate together to make the best clinical judgement for the service users this give a positive impact on the health and well-being of the service user. On the contrary, Beach and Oates (2014) suggest that the legislation and information governance may be a challenge in interprofessional communication and understanding the content and handling of information on service user
Communication and collaboration are an integral part of interprofessional health care teams. There could be possible barriers to communication and collaboration that could affect the entire team’s success. Personal values and expectation, personality differences, culture and ethnicity, and gender could affect how some individuals respond according to a patient’s care or needs(O’Daniel, 2008). For example, if someone comes from a background where they refrain from being assertive or challenging opinions openly, it could be difficult for that person to speak up if they think differently from the other team members. The differences in language and jargon can also be an obstacle to teams especially if members are not familiar with a specific type
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).
Collaboration is the foundation to success in any team. In the healthcare setting, interprofessional collaboration (IC) has been a significant trademark among numerous highly successful innovations. Collaboration between nurses and other healthcare providers improves the quality of care, coordination, and communication between the team leading to increased patient safety. Working in a team to achieve common goals implies open communication, respect for others, mutual trust, and honesty. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the meaning of interprofessional collaboration, its implications for practice, describe the role of IC in the provision of patient and family-centered care,
Communication involves relaying information from an individual to another through the use of verbal and nonverbal techniques. Many factors affect the effectiveness of information relay. It involves evaluating verbal aspects such as tone of voice, the emotional content being communicated, the timing and rapport of the interaction with patients, and nonverbal techniques such as facial expressions, time invested. It is necessary for productive and satisfactory work environment, improved patient outcomes, and settling conflicts. The purpose of this paper is to identify issues with ineffective communication and ways to improve proper communication throughout the a hospital’s interdisciplinary team and patients.