Leadership and Clinical Governance: Impact of Effective Communication on Patient Safety

Running Head: LEADERSHIP AND CLINICAL GOVERNANCE
Leadership and clinical governance
Name of the student
Name of the University
Author Note

1LEADERSHIP AND CLINICAL GOVERNANCE
Introduction
The assignment is the part of learning leadership and clinical governance. A critical
role is played by the nurses in identifying and responding to changes in the health status of
the patient. It is the role of the registered nurse to prevent adverse events and support the
patients throughout the care. A variety of leadership skills are required to be cultivated to
ensure patient safety. One of these skills is to identify and mange the patient risk to safety.
The aim of the assignment is to examine and critically disuses the evidence related to the
impact of effective communication on maintaining patient safety. Further, the assignment
presents the reflection on an incident where the patient safety was identified at risk as a result
of ineffective communication. The discussion in the reflection is based on the role of the
registered nurse as the leader in risk management.
Critical analysis
Patient safety is considered a public health issue. Communication is considered a
crucial factor in the patient care process. According to Brock et al. (2013), communication
between the physicians, patients, nurses, and other care providers is vital for care process.
Adverse events were recorded in the last decade as a result of the miscommunication between
the heath care professionals. Medical errors have been reported in several countries such as
Australia, US and others that were severe and fatal. It was estimated by the World Health
Organisation or WHO that 10% of all the hospital admitted people suffer damage due to care
process (Wittich et al., 2014). Amongst all the adverse events one third of them are found to
result from the human errors. As per the literature review these errors are preventable and can
be prevented by effective communication. It can be interpreted that effective communication
enhances the patient care and it plays a vital role.

2LEADERSHIP AND CLINICAL GOVERNANCE
In the book, “critical conversation for patient safety: an essential guide for health
professionals” edited by Tracy Levett-Jones, a greater emphasis has been laid on therapeutic
communication. There is a need of therapeutic communication between patients and the
health professionals. However, the focus is now extended to include communication between
the health care providers. The author of the book also emphasise on addressing the critical
relationship between the patent safety and communication. Patient safety is enhanced by the
critical conversation as it bridges the gap between the care providers and the care users
(Levett-Jones, 2017). It means that effective communication is critical not only between the
health care professionals and the patients but also among the health care professionals. It
ensures better sharing of the health status of the patient with other specialists and physicians
in the interdisciplinary team. According to Levett-Jones & Bourgeois (2015), therapeutic and
the interpersonal communication was found to satisfy the innate needs of the patients. It
includes the feelings of safety and confidence during the treatment as outlined in the
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. There are many evidences that effective communication
ensures the patient safety.
The SBAR system was developed for eliminating the simple communication error in
the health care. This system stands for situation, background, assessment and
recommendations. It is the information transfer system between the nurse and doctor in
concise manner. This tool is used during the medical handover in the intensive care unit. This
system was found to improve the communication between the health care providers and
enhanced the patient safety. However, the tool is criticised in terms of lack of awareness
among the patient and difficulty for nurses in communicating the sensitive issues to the
patient (Randmaa et al., 2014). It can be interpreted from the literature review that there are
more advantages than disadvantages of SBAR in ensuring the patient safety. It can be