Improving Communication in the Healthcare Field

Paper Summary:

The writer of this paper examines the lack of adequate communication in the healthcare industry. The writer contends and explains that a large number of health care professionals are not capable of effectively communicating the inherent risks during medical procedures to either the patient or those closely associated with the patient such as their spouse or family member. This paper explores the issues of teamwork, dialogue and contact which are the crux of risk management while discussing the strategies and methods that need to be implemented in order to effectively improve the communication skills of healthcare workers. This paper details the measures implemented by both the UCLA and New York Presbyterian teaching hospitals which pertain to this specific topic.

From the Paper:

"The ability adequately communicate risk levels amongst providers can become difficult. Also, hasty words can create a misperception in the minds of patients, if a doctor speaks too casually. "Science cannot prove a negative, but, where their children are concerned, parents want to be assured that risk is zero," and it is tempting for doctors to ignore communicating data, for fear of communication the issue. Some suggest, regarding all procedures, establishing a comprehensive 'Richter scale' of risks to communicate data to remove the potential for misunderstanding--for example, identifying the riskiest scenarios, and flagging them for hospital staff, or using the 'pain scale' amongst all hospital staff and on paperwork of 1-10 to communicate how much pain a patient is in, on a feeling level, as well as the state of health according to traditional medical data."

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