NURS2006: Enhancing Healthcare Through Effective Communication

This report investigates the crucial role of clinical communication in healthcare settings, emphasizing its significance in fostering positive patient-doctor relationships, improving patient outcomes, and fulfilling the National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) Standards of Australia. It examines the importance of communication in various aspects of healthcare, including partnering with patients, ensuring medical safety, clinical handover, prevention of pressure injuries, and fall prevention. The report also addresses common communication problems, such as provider-to-provider and provider-to-patient issues, and explores reasons for improper communication, including misperceptions, poor documentation, lack of informed consent, and language barriers. Furthermore, it presents a summary table of relevant studies, highlighting their aims, methodologies, findings, strengths, and limitations. The report concludes by advocating for improved communication practices through measures like hiring psychologists for communication training, facilitating direct pharmacist-patient contact, and involving family members during treatment. Desklib offers a wealth of study resources, including past papers and solved assignments, to further support students in understanding and mastering this vital aspect of healthcare.

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TABLE OF CONTENT
1. Introduction................................................................. 3
2. Importance of clinical communication..................... 3
3. Communication and NSQHS standards.................. 3
4. Technology and clinical communication..................4
5. Problems in communicating with patients...............5
6. Reasons of improper communication........................ 5
7. Causes of breakdown.................................................. 6
8. How to prevent miscommunication........................... 6
9. Conclusion and outcomes........................................... 6
10.References................................................................... 7
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 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In this report we are going to study about the techniques of clinical communications.
Communication is basic thing which is needed for every work. Better communication leads to
better results. Hospital is a place where patient come to get relief from their pains and
diseases. Bad communication in the premises can lead to incomplete diagnosis of patient and
results in chronic situations (Ventola, C.L., 2014). We will also discuss about the problems
why there is improper communication occurs in the hospitals. Why patients do not open up
about their disease with doctors. At last we will discuss about how better communication
skills can help in the fulfilment of NSQHS Standards of Australia.
 INTRODUCTION
Clinical communication is the exchange of information about a person's care that
occurs between treating clinicians, members of a multidisciplinary team, and between
clinicians and patients, families and carers. It is an integral part of care and effective
communication is essential to ensuring safe, high-quality care. For the god relation
between patient and the clinical staff, good communication skills are required. In
countries like Australia, government make NSQHS standards, which also requires
good communication skills.
 IMPORTANCE OF CLINICAL COMMUNICATION
Communication is necessary for the development of good relation of patient with doctors and
other medical staffs. Without sound communication processes, there will be no benefit to the
patient from the medical staff or doctors (A.J., 2013). Some of the reasons of why
communication is important in the clinical and medical processes are as follows:
 Improved collaboration between patient and medical staff.
 Better clinical communication results in better patient outcomes on daily basis.
 Due to better teamwork, work will be faster.
 Ineffective clinical communication will result in improper diagnosis of patient,
delayed and unnecessarily long treatments and wastage of time and money.
 COMMUNICATION AND NSQHS STANDARDS OFAUSTRALIA
As already discussed above, communication plays a vital role in the field of medical. All the
hospitals of Australia must have to accredit with NSQHS standards before running the
hospitals. Communication also a key feature of these standards (, D.K., 2013).
 Standard 2: ‘partnering with the patients’
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It states the active partnership of the consumer (patient) during the heath care process.
Good communication helps the patients to deal their problems with the medical staffs
and thus helping this standard to get fulfilled.
 Standard 4 : ‘the standard of medical safety’
It includes reducing of medical accidents and risks during any treatments of patient.
Communication also plays a key role in this by informing the patients about the
medical risks, about the side effects of the medicines and responsibilities for an agree
medication plan.
 Standard 6 : ‘clinical handover’
Clinical handover of the patient’s reports timely help in a sound treatment process.
This can be achieved by establishing mechanisms to include patients and carers in
clinical handover processes.
 Standard 8 : ‘prevention of pressure injuries’
According to this standard, pressure injuries should be critically managed and
prevention measures should be taken by the clinical staff to prevent pressure injuries
to the patients. By apprising patients and carers about the risks, precaution strategies
and management of pressure bruise through communication, standard 8 criteria can be
followed.
 Standard 10 : ‘prevention of falls and harm from falls’
Minimising the incidence of patient falls and reduction of the harm from falls. By
effectively communicating with the patient about the risk and the harm of falls,
medical staff can manage to create an effective medical plan for a particular patient to
reduce and minimize the risks and harm of falls and methods of prevention can be
discussed with the patient.
 PROBLEM IN COMMUNICATION WITH PATIENTS
Communication is very important in providing care of patients. Any sort of
miscommunication can lead to serious problems, such as complications in treatment or it can
even lead to death (, D.K., 2013). Communication problems not only occurs because the
patient doesn’t fully absorb what physicians or carer is advising, buy it also occurs due to the
various reasons, such as details are unregistered, misdirected , never collected, never recover
or disregard.
 REASONS OF IMPROPER COMMUNICATIONS
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There are various types of communication problems, there are as follows:
I. Provider to provider -
 Misperception about the patient’s condition.
 Poor documentation.
 Improper reading of patients medical reports.
II. Provider to patient-
 Lack of informed consent.
 Apathetic response to a patient’s complaints.
 Lack of medication education.
 Inadequate follow-up instructions.
Misperception due to language hurdle
.
 SUMMARY TABLE
S.No
.
Author/year/
country
Aim Sample setting Design method Main findings Strength/
limitations
1 Tombs, 2015. An study to identify
communication
behaviour among
hospital based
healthcare workers
British district
general
hospital.
Non-
participatory,
qualitative
observational
study.
Staff may
require
guidance in
fitting
utilization of
correspondence
offices.
Further,
unnecessary
accentuation
on data
innovation
might be
misinformed
since much
might be
picked up by
supporting data
trade through
correspondence
innovation.
Communicati
behaviours
resulted in an
interruptive
work place,
which seemed
to contribute
inefficiency i
work practice
2. Mathews,
2014
The point of the
investigation was to
investigate and
deliver explanations
identifying with
patients' encounters
of how nurture
Medical
caretakers are
as often as
possible
depicted in the
writing as poor
communicators
A subjective point
of view utilizing a
hermeneutic
phenomenological
approach was
viewed as the
most suitable
The
discoveries of
this
examination
demonstrate
that, rather
than the
The
ramifications
these
discoveries fo
clinical practi
is that the task
centred way t
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convey. , be that as it
may, not very
many
examinations
have analyzed
patients'
encounters of
how nurture
convey.
strategy for this
investigation.
writing that
proposes that
attendants are
bad at speaking
with patients,
medical
caretakers can
discuss well
with patients
when they
utilize a
patient‐centred
approach.
deal with
patient
consideration
that is related
with nursing
before, has al
the earmarks
being fit as a
fiddle.
3. Impact of patient
communication
problems on the risk
of preventable
adverse events in
acute care settings
All broad
intense
consideration
doctor's
facilities in the
area of Quebec
with at least
1500
confirmations
for every year
and a crisis
office were
qualified to
take an interest
in our
investigation
on the off
chance that
they were
arranged inside
260 km of
Montréal, the
examination
planning focus
(38.3% of
healing
facilities in the
territory).
They viewed
patients as
qualified for our
diagram survey in
the event that they
were 18 years old
or more
established; were
admitted to
healing center
between Apr. 1,
2000, and Mar.
31, 2001; and
were admitted to
healing center for
over 24 hours or
passed on inside
24 hours after
affirmation..
We made a
decision about
the
antagonistic
occasions
experienced by
63 (29%) of
these patients
to be
preventable,
for a general
rate of 2.7%
(95% CI 2.1%–
3.4%).
 CONCLUSION AND OUTCOMES
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After doing study about the importance of communication in hospital settings, we found that,
it is very necessary to have a sound communication practice of any medical staff with the
patient. Australian government by creating NSQHS standards clearly mentioned that a
hospital can only be accredited if they have a good communicating staff with the patients.
Nowadays, when technology is having an important role in everyone’s life, some of the
technologies also helping in creating good communication skills of the medical staffs with
the patients. Along with this, some more things can be included in this like
 Hiring a psychologist which can train medical staff about communication with
different patients.
 Direct contact of patients with the pharmacist because pharmacist can inform about
the drugs to the patient in better way.
 Allowing of any close family member of the patient during treatment for better
communication.
By all these measures, a better and healthier environment can be set-up in the hospital.
 REFERENCES
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knowledge brokering in hospital settings: Facilitating knowledge sharing and learning
for patient safety? Social Science & Medicine, 98, pp.79-86.
Ventola, C.L., 2014. Mobile devices and apps for health care professionals: uses and
benefits. Pharmacy and Therapeutics, 39(5), p.356.
Prey, J.E., Woollen, J., Wilcox, L., Sackeim, A.D., Hripcsak, G., Bakken, S.,
Restaino, S., Feiner, S. and Vawdrey, D.K., 2013. Patient engagement in the inpatient
setting: a systematic review. Journal of the American Medical Informatics
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King, B.J., Gilmore‐Bykovskyi, A.L., Roiland, R.A., Polnaszek, B.E., Bowers, B.J.
and Kind, A.J., 2013. The consequences of poor communication during transitions
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Geriatrics Society, 61(7), pp.1095-1102.
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