Effective Communication Strategies for Healthcare Quality Enhancement

This essay examines the critical role of communication in maintaining and improving the quality of healthcare services. It highlights effective communication between healthcare practitioners and patients, emphasizing the importance of clear information exchange for accurate diagnosis, treatment adherence, and patient recovery. The essay also explores internal communication within healthcare organizations, stressing the need for timely reporting, teamwork, and a culture of open dialogue to enhance efficiency and patient safety. Challenges such as language barriers and patient anxiety are discussed, along with strategies to overcome these obstacles. The essay underscores the importance of training healthcare professionals in communication skills and fostering a health-literate environment. It concludes by emphasizing that effective communication is central to improving and sustaining high standards in the healthcare sector, impacting patient outcomes and overall service quality. The essay also touches on the importance of communication in addressing issues like trauma in HIV patients.

Running Head: HEALTHCARE 1
Maintaining and Improving Quality of Health Services
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation

HEALTHCARE
The world, (nations, governments, international organizations, hospitals, and local health
facilities) is always and constantly putting effort to improve the level of health care they
provide to the public. Individuals also try to put their best foot forward towards this action in
order to improve their healthcare on a daily basis. So improving healthcare is a worldwide
move practiced in every place. There are significant improvements in the field of health but
also with challenges and failures (Piña et al., 2015). Despite all that, all the stakeholders
continue to struggle to improve and maintain a high level and quality health care both for
themselves and for the public. Improving and maintaining healthcare involves structures
being put in place. Thus it has to start from the government who is the supervisor of the
system; it also includes organizations both international and local not leaving behind
individuals or groups of people working as a team. So it is evident that in the struggle to
improve and maintain high-quality healthcare literary everyone is involved either directly or
indirectly (Piña et al., 2015).
One of the areas found to be working with the aim of improving healthcare is effective
communication. In the Oxford Student’s dictionary (3RD ed) describes communication to be
the act of sharing or exchanging information, ideas and feelings. Thus effective
communication in healthcare includes communication between practitioners or the healthcare
personnel and the patients. There is another aspect of communication in healthcare that
involves communication within the organization. This is between the management or the
supervisors in an institution and the doctors or practitioners. Normally, reporting is done on
time. In circumstances such as during an emergency, time is a crucial aspect and this would
be possible only if there is effective communication (Janati, Hosseiny, Gouya, Moradi &
Ghaderi, 2015). Another advantage would be every individual is able to take responsibility
and there is no occurrence of blaming one another because there would be teamwork from
communication. Communication helps individuals down in the healthcare management
pyramid to also get to relevant authority either to get help or information in which they would
need. This thus explains why and how communication would be crucial.
Yan-Shing, Kirstie, Anayda, and Debra (2018) acknowledge that communication is
important in any organization. They, however, argue that there is no consensus definition of
effective communication in the general public. That the public has no knowledge of good
communication skills or even its importance and this can be catastrophic at all times.
Sometimes the public may not really know the importance of sharing information with the
doctors maybe because of different reasons. But it would be really essential for them to share

HEALTHCARE
and improve communication with the practitioners as this goes a long way in easing up work.
The doctors and practitioners also need to practice communication skills as this would be
easier to get information. Good communication influences the rate of recovery of the patients.
This is because it is easier to diagnose a patient of a disease and after administering a
prescription, with the help of the patient, monitor any developments as time goes by. The
patient can help the doctor with monitoring the developments through communication and
that’s better than the doctor struggling on their own to get that bit of information. Since good
communication on the side of patients doesn’t improve with time, considerable effort is
dedicated to medical practitioners to improve their communication skills which will enhance
better communication with their patients. This thus means that they need to be trained and to
master effective communication skills (Philippa, Solange, Olivares, Bravo‐Soto & Theresa,
2018). The system has to then ensure that they improve effective communication within all
the stakeholders.
There are and can occur challenges that can affect the effective communication between
the practitioners and the patients. These may include a language barrier. Renata, Cindy,
Norman, Andrew, & Julia (2015) discuss that barriers to effective and even equitable
healthcare can result from linguistic differences of the patient and the doctor. They go further
to explain that this may be caused by immigration whereby immigrants may not be speaking
the same language as the medical practitioners who may be speaking native languages of the
places they are in. This means that there is a possibility of errors occurring during the
gathering of information from the patient and this can be dangerous and even life-threatening
(Lewis, Damarell, Tieman & Trenerry, 2018). When a wrong diagnosis is done, obviously
there would be the wrong prescription which will not only not improve the condition of but
also put the patient in more danger. This also occurs when foreign trained staff comes to
work locally whereby it means the doctor and patients would be speaking second languages.
In simple terms when the doctor and a patient cannot communicate, how is there even a
possibility of getting to know the problem, leave alone the solution? Cobos, Haskard-
Zolnierek & Howard (2015) explain the white coat hypertension that occurs when a patient is
in an office with a doctor. This possibly can then affect communication between the two
because the patient is already not at ease. Study and research have shown that when a doctor
is wearing a white coat, it causes some tension to the patient. This means the doctor or
practitioner may have a challenge in identifying the problem. They thus explain that

HEALTHCARE
improving the relationship between a patient and the practitioner can help ease or reduce
anxiety. For this to happen there needs to be trusted, effective communication and empathy.
On the other hand, for effective communication within an organization, it has to start
with the management of the organization or institution. Brach (2017) describes a health
literate institution as one that makes it easy for patients and people visiting the place easy to
navigate from place to place, ease of access to information and services for their benefits and
their patients. Clearly, this has to be associated with effective communication for that to be
possible. She goes on to describe that health literacy has to become an organization's main
priority for it to achieve its aim or even missions. Through focusing on written and spoken
communications the organization will be able to achieve beyond its limits or even
expectations. Savoia, Lin & Gamhewage (2017) articulate that the 21ST century offers specific
challenges especially when dealing with emergency risk communications. Further, they
explain that the time of/ during an exchange of information between experts and practitioners
and people who face threat to their lives is so crucial and shouldn’t be played around with.
The life, health, and recuperation of patients may be dependent on the effectiveness of
communication between the practitioners and also the organization.
Communication is important even in the surgical rooms (Bala et al., 2015). Good
leadership and communication are demonstrated when the leader is able to flexibly adapt
opinions from members of a surgical team and that means holding professional conversations
and discussions all like a team. Even the small things like passing equipment require very
good communication so as to save time and improve efficiency. This develops both the
members and makes it easier to work in the room. As the saying goes two heads are better
than one. Koo, Horowitz, Radice, Wang & Kleinman (2016) in their survey on the use of
communication between nurses observed and concluded that communication should be
patient-centered to increase patient understanding to help improve the health.
Within an organization, there is to need to have a timely reporting mechanism that is
effective and flexible to work with. Janati, Hosseiny, Gouya, Moradi & Ghaderi (2015) wrote
about the world systems of reporting communicable diseases. In their article, they evaluate
the systems and describe the world system as having poor surveillance and lacking supporters
to push it forward. They concluded that the reporting system of diseases in the whole world
has challenges thus the need to address continuous monitoring is very important. A timely
reporting mechanism is not only important in an organization but also in the system whereby

HEALTHCARE
the government is now included. This again rolls down to an individual in that in case of a
problem or when an abnormality is spotted quick action has to be taken in communicating to
the relevant authorities (Revere, Calhoun, Baseman & Oberle, 2015). The public and
individuals ought to know the right channels of communication so that necessary action can
be taken. For example, during an outbreak of a disease, the first and most important action to
be taken is to communicate so that the public can take preventive measures and sustain the
outbreak.
(Cooper et al., 2017) recognize the presence of blame culture and fear of retribution and
view them as barriers to reporting patient safety incidents. It is normal for individuals to be in
fear of taking responsibility when something happens. On the other hand, this can only
happen if there is no effective communication. In an institution that has developed proper
channels of communication, reporting of an incident would be free because there is no fear of
retribution. In an institution that lacks an effective communication channel, there will
definitely be the tendency of having individuals blaming one another before, during and even
after an incident.
Conclusively, in improving effective communication between practitioners and patients,
this involves the organization in place, practitioners working as a team and also individuals.
In this case, the government or system plays a very little role in affecting effective
communication between practitioners and patients. There are currently a lot of efforts being
made to improve communication because communication is at the core of the healthcare
sector. (Haberer et al., 2017) discuss that even though many of the people living with HIV are
adhering well to therapy, most of them still suffer and cannot be helped by therapy because of
poor communication. HIV patients suffer from trauma which may be caused by the society in
which they live in. if this is not addressed in the right way; it could lead to depression and the
virus being severe on the patient because they will not be even able to pick their medicine
due to fear of retribution from the society. (Colvin et al., 2014) In this case, both the patient
and the society need proper communication for the benefit of the patient and also the society.
In the year 2015 in July after the Belinda Gates Foundation met there arose better
interventions that could help in scaling down trauma in patients. In the interventions
counseling, education, communication technology, health delivery restructuring, and
economic incentives were some of the solutions that were discussed to help such patients. In
all the interventions that arose from this meeting, it could be seen that proper communication
was key to achieving the aims of the foundation on the trauma of HIV patients. There is a lot

HEALTHCARE
being done to improve the quality of healthcare being provided. (Pantoja et al., 2017) discuss
the points where the efforts of improving healthcare should be directed to. In their study, they
pinpoint healthcare recipients in medical and prescription adherence as one of the areas. They
also include healthcare workers and organizations.
In conclusion, communication is a very important tool in any environment and should be
taken seriously. Communication should be constantly improved so as to better the services
that are being provided. Better communication in an organization improves the services being
provided. How information is passed from the administration in an organization, in this case,
a health institution is very crucial. This also applies in how the doctor or practitioner
communicates to help in diagnosing the problem working through it to come to a solution.
The success and ease of this whole process are dependent on the level of communication
practiced at that given time. Communication alone goes a long way in improving and
maintaining high standards in the healthcare sector. Thus the practitioners and the patients
should exercise and try their level best to improve communication and in that case effective
communication.

HEALTHCARE
References
Bala, N., Sandhu, K., Bansal, L., Attri, J., Sandhu, G., & Mohan, B. (2015). Conflicts in
operating room: Focus on causes and resolution. Saudi Journal Of Anaesthesia, 9(4),
457. doi: 10.4103/1658-354x.159476
Brach, C. (2017). The Journey to Become a Health Literate Organization: A Snapshot of
Health System Improvement. Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, 240, 203–
237.
Cobos, B., Haskard-Zolnierek, K., & Howard, K. (2015). White coat hypertension: improving
the patient–health care practitioner relationship. Psychology Research and Behavior
Management, 8, 133–141. doi.org/10.2147/PRBM.S61192
Colvin, C. J., Konopka, S., Chalker, J. C., Jonas, E., Albertini, J., Amzel, A., & Fogg, K.
(2014). A Systematic Review of Health System Barriers and Enablers for Antiretroviral
Therapy (ART) for HIV-Infected Pregnant and Postpartum Women. PLoS ONE, 9(10),
e108150. http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0108150
Cooper, J., Edwards, A., Williams, H., Sheikh, A., Parry, G., Hibbert, P., … Carson-Stevens,
A. (2017). Nature of Blame in Patient Safety Incident Reports: Mixed Methods Analysis
of a National Database. Annals of Family Medicine, 15(5), 455–461.
http://doi.org/10.1370/afm.2123
Haberer, J. E., Sabin, L., Amico, K. R., Orrell, C., Galárraga, O., Tsai, A. C., … Bangsberg,
D. R. (2017). Improving antiretroviral therapy adherence in resource‐limited settings at
scale: a discussion of interventions and recommendations. Journal of the International
AIDS Society, 20(1), 21371. http://doi.org/10.7448/IAS.20.1.21371
Janati, A., Hosseiny, M., Gouya, M. M., Moradi, G., & Ghaderi, E. (2015).
Communicable Disease Reporting Systems in the World: A Systematic Review Article.
Iranian Journal of Public Health, 44(11), 1453–1465.
Koo, L. W., Horowitz, A. M., Radice, S. D., Wang, M. Q., & Kleinman, D. V. (2016). Nurse
Practitioners’ Use of Communication Techniques: Results of a Maryland Oral Health
Literacy Survey. PLoS ONE, 11(1), e0146545.

HEALTHCARE
http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0146545
Lewis, S., Damarell, R. A., Tieman, J. J., & Trenerry, C. (2018). Finding the Integrated Care
Evidence Base in PubMed and Beyond: A Bibliometric Study of the
Challenges. International Journal of Integrated Care, 18(3), 11.
http://doi.org/10.5334/ijic.3975
Pantoja, T., Opiyo, N., Lewin, S., Paulsen, E., Ciapponi, A., Wiysonge, C. S., … Oxman, A.
D. (2017). Implementation strategies for health systems in low-income countries: an
overview of systematic reviews. The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (9),
CD011086. Advance online publication.
http://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD011086.pub2
Philippa M M., Solange R G., Bravo‐Soto C., Olivares T. & Theresa A L. (2018)
Communication Skills Training for Healthcare Professionals Working with people who
have Cancer. Cochrane Systematic Review Retrieved from: Cochrane Library
Piña, I. L., Cohen, P. D., Larson, D. B., Marion, L. N., Sills, M. R., Solberg, L. I., & Zerzan,
J. (2015). A Framework for Describing Health Care Delivery Organizations and
Systems. American Journal of Public Health, 105(4), 670–679.
http://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2014.301926
https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD003751.pub4/abstract
Renata M,. Cindy G,. Norman S., Andrew G. R., & Julia H. (2015) Overcoming Language
Barriers in Healthcare: A protocol for investigating safe and effective communication
when patients or clinicians use a second language BMC Health Services Research 15,
371 http://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-015-1024-8
Revere, D., Calhoun, R., Baseman, J., & Oberle, M. (2015). Exploring bi-directional and
SMS messaging for communications between Public Health Agencies and their
stakeholders: a qualitative study. BMC Public Health, 15, 621.
http://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-015-1980-2
Savoia, E., Lin, L., & Gamhewage, G. M. (2017). A Conceptual Framework for the

HEALTHCARE
Evaluation of Emergency Risk Communications. American Journal of Public Health,
107(Suppl 2), S208–S214. http://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2017.304040
Yan-Shing C., Kirstie C., Anayda G. & Debra B (2018). Interventions to Support Effective
Communication Between Maternity Care Staff and Women in Labour: A mixed-methods
Systematic Review. Midwifery 59, 4-16 doi.org/10.1016/j.midw.2017.12.014