Research A common situation that has been reported on a regular basis within numerous health care facilities is the overall amount of communication that is taking place between nurses, doctors and patients.
In some cases this lack of communication that is occurring among the staff can lead to errors and possibly death. While this is no doubt a tragedy, the reality that changing the culture of communication with in the hospital can be a formidable challenge that must be addressed to fix this ongoing problem that is occurring.
This has lead to an increase in the number of medical malpractice lawsuits, where many plaintiffs have often said that they only way that they could find out the truth as to what happened to their relatives is to sue because the health care facility was not giving them the information that they asked for. Instead, opting not to communicate with the patient’s family because of the culture that exists with in the health care facility itself.
This means that in order to address this growing concern the staff of the facility must at least agree that there is a problem and must then want to implement these changes to improve the overall amount of communication that is taking place among the staff as well as patients.
When you examine the overall significance of the lack of communication problems with in different health care facilities it is clear that this could affect the overall quality of care that patients are receiving.
Since one of the major responsibilities of nursing is to ease the suffering of their patients means that they could very well be going against this tenant by not communicating with different staff member effectively. In most situations, it is the culture of the hospital that punishes those who speak up about what problems they see that is taking place. For example when a nurse is on her rounds she could observe that the patient’s condition has been steadily deteriorating.
The most logical course of action would be to discuss these observations with the physician on duty; however, the physician is so busy that they simply do not have time to hold these kinds of conversations with the nurse. Because of this atmosphere most nurses will keep these observations to themselves, effectively decreasing the overall quality of care that the patient is receiving due to culture of communication that exists at the health care facility. Studies from various resources For the purpose of examining the different resources a qualitative approach will be taken.
This is when you are attempting to address what is occurring with a problem by looking at the overall reasons why a certain behavior is occurring and why the situation is occurring.
As you look at the different resources that were researched it is clear that all of them talked about what could be done to address the different communication problems that are occurring at different health care facilities and it identifies how this problem is effecting not only nurses but the staff at the hospital in general.
The first source titled Communication between hospital nurses critical, MO group says; shows how at St. Johns Mercy Medical Center in St. Louis the nurses went on strike not for pay related issues but communication.
Where, these nurses felt that to provide the most effective care to their patients, means that communication must improve among the hospital staff. The article then compared to another hospital called St. Josephs that had a lower turnover ratio among the nurses.
One of the main reasons why nurses were staying longer at St.
Joseph’s is that they had better communication among the staff. The way that they improved the overall level of communication is by receiving the input from the nurses regarding communication issues and to have consistent communication procedures in place that will communicate what is occurring to all the staff. This usually involves group meetings, one on one meetings and written memos to keep everyone updated.
In the article Talk isn’t cheap: improving communication among doctors, nurses, and patients can help reduce medical errors, but doing so means making sure that strategy triumphs over culture; highlights how communication issues have led to an atmosphere of increased errors because of the overall culture that exists in many hospitals. To break through this barrier Stanford Medical Center began doing simulations where doctors and nurses are interacting in highly stressful environments that could cause communication errors leading to medical errors.
To reduce this problem the hospital has a series of teams in place that can be part of providing regular assistance to the patient and then when they are unable to reach their doctor they will be able to communicate with the team, who would know how to handle the different situations. This has caused malpractice law suits to drop considerably. Is there enough evidence to suggest change in the workplace? What further research might be needed? Clearly there is enough evidence to suggest that communication is a major problem that is occurring at many different health care facilities.
It is through addressing this issue that you can improve care and reduces incidents of malpractice that are occurring. While the research indicates ways to improve communication, the reality is that more research is needed to highlight a variety of ways that communication can be improved.
Then once the improvement occurs it must then be practiced on a consistent basis to ensure that errors are reduced and the overall amount of care is of the highest quality. Bibliography Reynold, Dan. (2007).
