Case Study Analysis: Communication Breakdown in Healthcare Management

This case study analyzes a healthcare center's communication issues, focusing on the negative impacts of poor communication between patients, their families, and healthcare professionals, as well as among the professionals themselves. The assignment highlights the consequences of ineffective communication, including patient dissatisfaction, medication errors, increased stress, and legal issues. It examines the root causes, such as short conversations, difficult language, lack of patient education, and poor inter-professional communication, which led to a crisis situation. The study uses a literature search, including databases like PubMed and Google Scholar, to identify the effects of poor communication and proposes recommendations like experienced leadership and improved communication strategies. The case emphasizes the importance of effective communication for patient safety, quality care, and the overall reputation and financial health of the healthcare organization. The study offers a detailed overview of communication breakdowns, their consequences, and potential solutions within a healthcare management context.

Running head: MANAGEMENT CASE STUDY
MANAGEMENT CASE STUDY
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Executive summary:
Management in healthcare is one of the sectors of profession which helps different organisations
by providing leadership skills and directions that help in establishing of a perfect personal health
services. It also helps in development of service, reputation and productivity of the different
divisions, departments, units and also services within the organisations. They help to conduct the
operations in a smooth way with the improvement of the quality of service for creating and
delivering the organisations’ best product and service effectively and efficiently helping in
developing patient satisfaction. Proper management is often required in properly conducting
patient safety services. Different issues that may disrupt the flow of work are healthcare staff
absenteeism, poor quality service, improper communication, medication error, improper hand
hygiene, cultural incompetency. All these if not properly managed may threaten patient life and
reputation may be compromised. In this assignment poor communication issues are depicted. It
may take place between provided or between providers and patients. It may lead to poor decision
medication, improper medication administration, increased stress, increase if patient
comparisons, long waiting times. Hence, managers are required to handle the situation
effectively with correct procedures and recommendations to overcome improper communication
and increase service quality for patients.

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Introduction:
Communication is one of the key factor hat is very much essential in healthcare sector for
effective treatment of patients. This communication is important not only between the patient
and healthcare staffs but also among the different healthcare professionals (Kings et al. 2013).
This is essential to assure that a smooth flow of work takes place in healthcare along with
maintenance of a culture of safety and also high quality service to students. Improper
consequences may lead to adverse effects (Whitehead et al. 2015). The assignment will help to
portray a similar case where a hospital faced adverse effects of improper communication.
Literature search are done to identify the consequences of ineffective communication and
proposed recommendation to overcome them.
Case study:
The healthcare centre had urgently appointed a developmental manager in their organisation in
order to handle the crisis period that the centre was going thorough. It was seen that the complain
cell was being overloaded with complains that mainly depicted patients’ and their family
members regarding the safety of the patients. The main cause of concern was found that the
patients and their family members were poorly communicated about the patient’s health. The
healthcare professionals also did not mention important facts and information about the patient to
their family members. When asked, they were seen to answer their concern wither in very short
conversation and also in difficult languages which ultimately did not satisfy the patients as well
as their family members. Moreover, the patients also complained that they were not properly
educated about their health issues, the interventions taken and many other administrative criteria
of the hospitals. Moreover, they also did not communicate properly with the patients during their

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stays at the hospitals which made them nervous and restless. Moreover, it was also seen that not
only communication was poor among the patients and the healthcare staffs but the situation was
similar among the professionals as well. Inappropriate communication was found among the
doctors, nurses, technician and the administrators which often hampered the smooth flow of the
regular activities of the healthcare centre. It was also found that a continuous blame game was
present in the regular busy periods as no one shared proper relationship with each other in the
workplace. All these had resulted in the development of a tensed situation in the hospital as large
numbers of negative incidents are taking places. Besides, huge number of patient complaints,
there has been also increase in number of legal cases against the organisation which had really
degrades the reputation of the organisation. Hence, it is extremely important to handle the patient
situation and deal with it properly to overcome the present situation of crisis.
Search strategy:
Some of the best databases which are searched on the present topic of discussion are pubmed,
medline, cinalh, proquest , Google scholars and others. The inclusion criteria were that all the
papers should be within the past 5 years and the exclusion criteria was that all papers others than
English language were excluded. The keywords used were ‘effects of poor communication’,
‘consequences of poor communication in healthcare’, ‘patient-provider communication’,
communication among healthcare staffs, strategies for better communication in healthcare and
others.

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Research evidence:
Effective communication is considered by researchers to share a strong positive
association with the patient safety and easy flow of work in the healthcare wards. It is very much
important in providing top quality care for the patient. It helps in overcoming complexes among
different healthcare centres which they develop mainly due to the system of power play
(Laschinger et al. 2014). Any breakdown in the process of effective communication often results
in adverse events which may even be life threatening for many patients. Moreover improper
communications can land the healthcare professionals in legal battle which affect their practices
and career.
Researchers usually find two types of communication mediums in the healthcare centres. The
first one is the professional - professional communication breakdowns. This is often stated by the
researchers to bring down adverse effects like miscommunication about the patient’s condition,
poor documentation as well as failure to read the medical records of the patient.
Not only that improper communication result in hurting the self respect and self esteem of the
patient as they are not made to know their own health conditions properly. This often lead to
breaches in the principles of autonomy and dignity which against result in ethical breaches (Liau
et al., 2014). Inadequate informed consent is also measured by many researchers to be one of the
most harmful aspects of profession - patient communication is inadequate informed consent
which leads to overlooking the rules of the principles of autonomy and dignity. Many researchers
have also shown that it is indeed very important for nurses to develop therapeutic relationship
with the patients so that best outcomes could be achieved. Communication is the most important
aspect for development of such relation. However, unsympathetic response to patients complains

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have negative effect on the patient for which they may feel neglected. Thus tensions develop
between both the stakeholders which care many complicacies in the treatment of the patients.
Moreover effective communication is also very important for nurses to properly educate patients
about their conditions and the different interventions that they need to take for self care and self
management (Kurt et al. 2016). Inadequate education provided to the patient about medication
due to improper communication is harmful for the patient and may result in hospital
readmissions as the patient may not be able to follow the correct procedure and lead to adverse
results. Poor communication may also deprive the patient to know each and every detail of the
interventions and treatment plan of the nurses. They may not be able to know all the details about
heir disorders that they need to know. They may also perceive wrong information due to the
inappropriate way of communicating like using of scientific terms and jargons. These should be
avoided by professionals in order to make the patient literate completely about their health. Often
miscommunication due to language barrier also takes place (Ratanowgsa et al. 2013). Proper
communication while handling patient with different cultures are important to provide culturally
competent care. Poor communication with them may breach their cultural ethic which may harm
their sentiments and lead to poor quality service. These ultimately result in poor service delivery
to the patients and the quality of care is also compromised which ultimately affects the reputation
of the healthcare centres. This in turn makes the healthcare lose its profitability that affects the
overall financial health of the organisation and in turn poor resource allocation to staffs. In this
way poor communication can affect the foundation of the entire healthcare centres (Lancaster et
al. 2015).
Coming to another genre of discussion is the consequences of poor communication among the
different healthcare professionals. The first consequences of improper communication among the

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providers are medication errors. Often documentation that includes symptoms, diagnosis,
treatment, care plan and medication, problems, risks and health safety information are not
handed properly to the delegates or other nurses who are working in teams which leads to
handling patient in an unethical way by different members of the same team. This not only
confuses the team members but also interrupts the quality service which the patient needs to get
from the team members (Reader, Gillespie and Roberts 2014). Often different members of the
team must be informed about each and every changes in the documents by diagnosing the patient
in every interval so that every members are aware of their next steps and how different
medication need to be provided in correct dose and correct route. Secondly, inappropriate
communication among the administrations and the health workers often result in long waiting
times for the patients. Due to improper communication, proper managements are not made while
fixing appointments, allotting doctors for shifts, appointing more number of patients than the
doctors can provide time to, improper date and time given to patients and others all lead to
accumulation of more number of patients and also they have to wait offer a larger time. Also
improper communication between the nurses results in long waiting time for the patients either
for their meal, medication, pain management and others (Paddison et al. 2015). Thirdly, it is also
seen that miscommunication or poor communication among the nurses and other healthcare
staffs often arise from power struggles , different complexes, lack of confidence and many
others. Disagreements as well as differences of the opinions take place among the nurses which
can result in occurrences of serious conflicts as well as blame games in the workplace. Improper
communication results in misunderstandings and additional development of ideas about each
other which may not exist in reality. Hence communication should be done on a wide scale to
resolve the issue and ensure proper workplace culture and safety. Fourthly, sometimes poor

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decision making also result from improper communication among the different healthcare
professionals as the individuals taking the decision may not have all the details need to make
correct and rational decision regarding a patient care plan necessities (King and Hoppe, 2013).
There are four important section that every healthcare professionals need to undertake to make a
correct decision regarding the patient – the problem of the patient, possible solution, alternative
and consequences and strengths and awareness. Researches show that the better the four aspects
discussed among team members, there is high chance of successful outcome of the treatment
(O’Halloron et al. 2015). Often lack of information, a planned procedure with the team members,
different decisions taken by different members according to their own rationale and other all lead
to improper decision remaining for a patient that affect the health of the patient. Fifthly,
miscommunication and poor communications all lead to increased stress among the healthcare
professionals due to unnecessary worry as well as concern over the workplace issues despite
whether the issues are real or perceived.
Hence form the above mentioned disadvantages of the poor communication and
miscommunication among the provider-provider and also the provide-patient results in negative
outcomes for the patient as well as destruction of the reputation of the organisation. Hence
proper method for influencing proper communication among the stakeholders must be
introduced by the management systems so that severe negative effects can be avoided (Aggarwal
et al. 2015).
One of the best recommendations to resolve the issue of communication provided by the
researchers are the appointments of experienced leaders in the fields of nursing, administration,
financial departments, customer care departments and others. Leaders with their effective styles
of leadership will help in development of an unity within the team with the proper establishments

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o environment which besides being competitive will also help the nurse to appreciate each
other’s work and also give scope to each other for mode development of skill and knowledge.
The leaders will invite feedbacks form each of the members regarding their connection with the
patients and also with their tem members and accordingly will try to solve the issues of the
members respectively (Curtis et al. 2016). All these would include satisfaction of the profession
of the healthcare professionals and their stress level would reduce. As professionals become
comfortable with their colleagues, issues like improper decision making blame games and others
will eventually lessen. Better the leadership better will be the quality development of the team
members and hence better will be the patient satisfaction.
Another important recommendation would be to conduct weekly training classes where trainers
would help the healthcare professionals to learn the minute basics of proper communication.
Different effective methods of communication like proper listening, proper speaking, feedback
giving skills, feedback receiving skills, correct body language, effective participation in team
meetings and others all ensure that professionals have an idea about communication models and
how to apply them (Martin et al. 2013). Moreover, the trainer also needs to discuss the different
ways about how healthcare staff can develop communication with patients by introduction of
guideline in the training classes and also by discussing the important methods of communication
with patients. The correct ethics of communication should be taught to the professionals.
For the first few months, after the introduction of the interventions a monitoring body should be
introduced whose main work would be to monitor each and every work of the professionals in
every field of the healthcare and report their observations. This would be made in to a report and
this evaluation report would then be against introduced to the quality development management

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so that further modifications are done according the results of the effective training and
leaderships on the professionals (Khamisa et al. 2015).
On the administrative basis, the managers as well as other administrators should routinely
conduct meetings so that they can communicate with each other regrading the different issues
faced by the healthcare professionals in different domains, financial resources, outpatient
meetings and arrangements, allocation of proper nurse patient ratio and others (Bays et al. 2014).
When effective communications among the managers and administrations are done properly,
there remains less scope of confusion on the work floor as resources remain ready, proper
workforce is found on the floor, less commotion is seen and smooth flow of work is carried.
Conclusion:
One of the most important factors that lead to compromised patient quality and also a tensed
environment among the healthcare professionals are poor communication. Poor communication
between healthcare professional lead to issues like medication errors, long waiting times,
improper decision making workplace conflicts, increased stress and others. Improper patient –
provider communication leads to legal an ethical consequence where the patients are not
communicated about their disorders and ailments, the interventions provided. Their autonomy
and dignity are also snot maintained which harm their self respect. Moreover they face long
waiting times that reduce the quality of service. Patients and family suffer from anxiety which
leads to further deterioration of health; Moreover communication required for patient education
is also not conducted properly. In these situation, training sessions, effective leadership,
monitoring body, administration board all lead to betterment of communication and positive
outcomes.

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References:
Agarwal, S., Perry, H.B., Long, L.A. and Labrique, A.B., 2015. Evidence on feasibility and
effective use of mHealth strategies by frontline health workers in developing countries:
systematic review. Tropical medicine & international health, 20(8), pp.1003-1014.
Bays, A.M., Engelberg, R.A., Back, A.L., Ford, D.W., Downey, L., Shannon, S.E., Doorenbos,
A.Z., Edlund, B., Christianson, P., Arnold, R.W. and O'Connor, K., 2014. Interprofessional
communication skills training for serious illness: evaluation of a small-group, simulated patient
intervention. Journal of palliative medicine, 17(2), pp.159-1
Curtis, J.R., Treece, P.D., Nielsen, E.L., Gold, J., Ciechanowski, P.S., Shannon, S.E.,
Khandelwal, N., Young, J.P. and Engelberg, R.A., 2016. Randomized trial of communication
facilitators to reduce family distress and intensity of end-of-life care. American journal of
respiratory and critical care medicine, 193(2), pp.154-162.
Khamisa, N., Oldenburg, B., Peltzer, K. and Ilic, D., 2015. Work related stress, burnout, job
satisfaction and general health of nurses. International journal of environmental research and
public health, 12(1), pp.652-666.
King, A. and Hoppe, R.B., 2013. “Best practice” for patient-centered communication: a narrative
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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 from hospital to skilled
nursing facility: a qualitative study. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 61(7), pp.1095-
1102.

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Kurtz, S., Silverman, J. and Draper, J., 2016. Teaching and learning communication skills in
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