Professional Communication in Patient Safety

Running head: PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION IN PATIENT SAFETY
PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION IN PATIENT SAFETY
Name of the Student
Name of University
Author’s note

PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION IN PATIENT SAFETY
Professional communication in the safety of the patient
Introduction
Professional communication in nursing is essential in nursing as the nurses have to
communicate to a large number of people with varied cultural, educational and the linguistic
background (Hill, Hall &Glew, 2017). Effective communication among the health service users
and the health service providers promotes safe health and wellbeing. It also helps to promote
self-care, helps in patient empowerment, enhancement of self-esteem (McCabe and Timmins,
2013) The essay would focus on the role of effective communication in communicating with an
Aboriginal patient Mary Chan.
Discussion
The role of professional communication has been discussed in the light of a case study
that describes about an Aboriginal female patient Mary Chan, who had been admitted to a
clinical setting for a comprehensive assessment. It should be noted that communication does not
only mean a two way interaction, but it is actually much more than sharing information
verbally(Levett-Jones, 2016). The aboriginals depend largely on traditional healers and the bush
medicines to cure diseases. It is the effective communication that can be helpful to develop a
relationship of trust between the service providers and the service users (Levett-Jones, 2016).
This development of the therapeutic relationship between the patient and the caregivers helps the
patient to adhere to the treatment regimen (Levett-Jones, 2016). Effective communication assists

PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION IN PATIENT SAFETY
the caregivers to understand the actual needs of the patient and provide a patient centered care.
Patient centered care can be considered as one of the major aspect of the profession of nursing.
Patient centered care underpinned the ethical principles of empathy, autonomy, respect,
transparency and beneficence. Hill, Hall and Glew, (2017) have stated that the caregivers who
practice a patient centered care are likely to be open minded, self regulated, self aware and
generally posses a profound sense of accountability towards the profession.
Again, Mary Chan is an elderly patient and might be burdened with both physical and
the emotional stress, hence a caregiver can communicate with the person and provide her/him
with psychological support. McCabe and Timmins, (2013) have identified, that patient safety
outcomes have been linked to effective communication. It has been associated with reduced
hospital stay, reduced rate of the medication errors.
It is through effective communication that important medical information is delivered to
the patients. Effective communications skills have to be adopted by the nurses while the
disclosure of any adverse new. Again communication helps in the delivery of the necessary
information to the patient to promote self care (Levett-Jones, 2016). Patient autonomy and
seeking consent from the patient is one of the important elements of nurse-patient
communication and hence should be followed while assessing Ms. Chan. Communicating with
the patient provides scope to the patient to take part in the decision making process. Right after
the communication process it necessary to keep a documentation of the patient’s records. All the
documentations of Mary Chan can be written or can be electronically generated. It should be
remembered that the documents might act as simple patient records that saves time during patient
assessment, but also might act as legal documents at the time of any lawsuits. While