Effective communication in a healthcare
Communication is very vital in delivering safe and effective care. Most of the major incidences of adverse health outcomes arise mostly due to communication failure (Bagnasco et al., 2019, p.457). It leads to ineffective care and could also lead to severe health conditions for the patients or death. Therefore, communication is very vital during a patients`stay in critical care as well as when a patient is being transferred from one department to another. In the emergency department, various health professionals work as a team to save lives and to offer patients optimum care. According to Blackburn et al. (2019,p.31), there were more than 400 serious safety incidences involving poor communication in Australia between the years 2017 and 2019. There are also hundreds of minor occurrences that occur but are rarely reported because they don’t result in severe consequences. Additionally, poor communication has led to more than 1744 death of patients in the last five years in Australia alone. The malpractice costs arising from incidences of poor communication between healthcare workers are more than 1.8billion over five years (Källberg et al., 2017, p.18). This, therefore, shows the importance of communication for both nurses and general practitioners.
One of the main benefits of effective communication in a healthcare setting is that it leads to increased patient safety. Effective communication ensures that there is a clear and uninterrupted flow of information between the healthcare professionals involving in treating and caring for the patient (House & Havens, 2017, p.167). This, therefore, reduces the probability of making an error due to gaps in information that could have been avoided if the communication between the staff involved was better. For example in the case described above, the death of the patient could have been avoided if the nurse and the ED doctor would have given attention the need for communication in the department. The nurse should have communicated his findings about the high blood alcohol volume to the doctor. Failure to relay this information therefore resulted in the doctor making the wrong decision which cost the patient his life. The doctor was also at fault for making assumptions instead of communicating with the nurse effectively. Instead of assuming that the nurse could monitor the patient and adjust the dose depending on the patients` reaction to the drug, he should have communicated the instructions expressly in order to eradicate any communication loopholes which could threaten the safety of the patient.
Communication is also very critical since it results in improved patient outcomes (Sari et al., 2016, p.59). When there is effective communication between various professionals in the healthcare sector, patients are able to receive higher quality of care and hence resulting to better outcomes. Effective communication within the hospital ensure that everyone involved in the care of the patient has sufficient information required in making decisions. This therefore makes it possibles for nurses and doctors to make informed decisions regarding the health of the patient. Having the right information helps in making correct diagnosis and hence enabling the doctor to prescribe the right interventions to improve the health of the patient. According to Expósito et al., (2018, p.89) , effective communication also guides nurses on the appropriate care that should be offered to a particular patient. This therefore ensures that the patient is given the best care and hence improving their health outcomes.
My experience in the ED department also taught me the importance of having a good relationship with co-workers (Liu et al., 2019, p.2944). The instance unearthed some details about the relationship about doctor X the nurse. The two did not enjoy a cordial working relationship even before the occurrence of the incidence involving patient Y. They used to disagree on many issues and sometimes they used to argue a lot. Even after the death of the patient, both the ED doctor and the nurse could not remain calm and they really argued on who was at fault for the mistake which had just occurred. Teamwork is very vital in offering care to patients especially in the emergency department where the difference between life and death is a matter of seconds and hence there is no room for unnecessary differences (Kumar et al., 2019, p.30). For there to be effective communication between people working in the same department, it is important that there is a good working relationship between colleagues (Gharaveis et al., 2018, p.49) Any differences that arise should be resolved amicably in order to avoid communication breakdown that may compromise the safety of the patients or which might result to poor quality services. Therefore, both the nurse and the doctor at the center of the incidence should not have allowed personal differences come into the way and this could have avoided the death of the patient.
As I was helping with the resuscitation, I was composed since I had experienced such other incidence during my placement at the hospital. I was wondering why the condition of the patient had deteroriated within a short duration despite the patient appearing to be stable and not in serious danger just some few hours ago. I did not have a major role to play in this instance but I offered the team of doctors and nurses all the assistance they required to save the patient but he passed away unfortunately. All the actions I performed during this occasion were informed by the instructions I was given the nurse who was my instructor as well as the scope of training as a nurse.
The incidence taught me some of the factors that contribute to communication breakdown within the hospital setting. Apart from the poor working relationship between the nurse and doctor X, the hospital had an acute shortage of staff. This therefore mearnt that the doctor had many patients to look after and hence making it difficult to concentrate and offer optimal care to one patient. This is very dangerous becomes it means that the staff in the facility were overworking and hence increasing the risk of making errors (O’Connor et al., 2020, p.201). The doctor could not get time to assess the patient and even the nurses were fully occupied and this led to the lack of effective communication between the two. The workload could therefore have led to high stress levels for the healthcare staff and hence leading to the communication failure which led to the mistake that happened.