Communication Strategies for Patient Safety in Healthcare

Running head: COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES
Communication Strategies
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1COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES
In case of maintaining a safety environment for the patients in a health care sector it is
very crucial to maintain an effective communication strategies. Moreover, it is observed that, the
patient’s perception of good quality health services is greatly dependent on the quality of
communication among the health care team and the patients. In a health care setting an effective
communication is important for the health care providers in order to protect their patients, saving
the total treatment costs, reducing the cases of medical errors. However, a tiny gap in
communication may cost a huge lose to the patients and health care providers (Schuster, 2010).
In this essay, a case study of a cardiac illness patient is depicted and there was communication
error during the treatment of this patients. In the later part of the essay, the risk factors in that
incident was identified with the help of Patient-Safe Transformational Model of Communication
and after that, the implementation process of patient safe communication strategies are discussed
in a brief manner.
Case Scenario
In a clinical nursing practice a situation was found where the errors were identified and
this condition might alter the safety of the patients. In that situation it was observed that a
patient was admitted in the hospital with cardiac illness. Doctor instructed to reduce the dose of
potassium for that patient. However, due to lack of communication the instruction was not
implemented till the evening by the nursing personnel. As a result, the nurses had given wrong

2COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES
doses of potassium causing medication errors. The role of potassium is cardiac contraction is
very crucial as it has serious role in generating the action potential of the cardiac muscle. After
the depolarization phase, the cardiac muscle starts to repolarize and in this phase the opening of
K+ channels occur and the repolarization takes place. The excessive amount of K+ in the blood
can cause serious consequences such as heart failure. According to the study of Thomsen et al.
(2018), it was observed that increased level of potassium level that is hyperkalemia is associated
with the heart failure. Moreover, the risk of reduced kidney function was also observed that. The
alteration in the conduction system can also be observed in hyperkalemia (Sarwar et al., 2016).
In case of this patient the medication error can cause problems such as cardiac arrhythmia,
altered functioning of the conduction system. Thus it can be said that, the medication error by the
nurses had altered safety of the cardiac patient in the hospital.
The Patient Safe Transformational Model of Communication
In maintaining safe condition for the patient it is very important to follow an effective
communication process in the hospital care setting. The patient safe transformational model of
communication can be very effective in case of the patient described above. According to the
communication model, the depicted situation can be put under the biological and professional
context of that particular model as due to the medication error the patient might face biological
problems and the error occurred due to the lack of professionalism of the staffs. The risk factors