Healthcare Communication: Reflection on a Patient Care Scenario

This report reflects on the importance of effective communication in healthcare, focusing on a scenario involving an elderly patient in a cancer ward. The report highlights communication gaps between the patient, care company, and healthcare professionals, emphasizing the impact on patient care and experience. It details a specific interaction where the author, a nurse associate, addressed the patient's concerns and used effective communication to improve her understanding and acceptance of the situation. The Gibbs reflective model is used to analyze the experience, identifying feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion, and action plan. The report underscores the significance of clear communication for healthcare professionals in ensuring quality patient care, resolving issues, and achieving desired outcomes. It also references relevant literature on communication and its impact on healthcare settings.

Reflection on Effective
communication

INTRODUCTION
Communication not only plays an important role in conduction of day to day
activities of an individual life but also is an important tool which is considered by managers
and leaders of various business sectors to ensure effective conduction of operational
activity of the firm. This helps in establishing better relations with respective individuals
indulged in a contract and enables a person to define clear objectives and goals towards
attainment of desired objectives. In context to healthcare professionals, it enables
healthcare professionals to define better relations with service takers and also provides
simplified knowledge which adds up to basic knowledge about various patents taking
treatment (Hovland and Lumsdaine, 2017). This report is an inclusion of reflection upon
importance of communication. In the process being Gibs Reflective model is being taken
into consideration. With addition to that, presented document will include effective
communication and interpersonal skill required for caring of a patient.
Scenario
The base of settings environments is a cancer ward. By working there, the
practitioner used to take care after an elderly lady who used to live by herself and was
entitled to get three times a day package of care from a private limited company which was
funded by her family (Lapidoth, 2017). Due to certain complications in medications and
nursing, she used to stay on the ward. One of the goal was to rehab her back in care
setting as the place she was staying in didn't provided all the required facilities which was
needed to restore her health and mental condition to best working as previously. Due to
lack of communication in the place she was staying in caused lots of difficulties for getting
her required perfect treatment. Furthermore, it also resulted in bad customer experience to
the patient and also caused high risk of causing more harm to health condition of the
patient.

Reflection
The patient family wanted to update company in which they were paying money for
three packages with name of the lady. But due to some issues they were not able to
contact the hospital authority, thus resulted in communication gap. The respective
company wanted to hear before 6 PM on a day prior to discharging the patient.
One a fine morning I went to meet the patient; she was half sleep on a bed. Firstly, I
took a glance about the surrounding that were provided by the care company to her. In the
process being, I noticed that she was full awake and was admiring that who is the guy
disturbing her private space. In the next frame, I greeted her first which a warm wish and
my name. She gave me an intense look and nodded with like no expressions on her face. I
wanted to know, if she was fine with all services which is being provided by the care
company. But I tried getting more personalisation first, I first of all asked if she needed
water and continued till I felt that she was comfortable with me. For about 15 minutes of
communication, I was able to make her comfortable and then when I came to the main
point which I wanted to ask her i.e. if she is comfortable with staying at the company rather
than in a rehab centre (Babe, 2020). She with great surprise was so pissed out of type of
institute and demanded for going back to home. I tried to convince her with best of my
communication and understood every points that were being said by not only from her
mouth but also by her heart invoice could be heard very specifically. At last by highlighting
on various advantages in staying at rehab centres rather than a care company and also by
stating the truth of how serious can a situation be in terms of her health, I was able to
somehow bring smile on her face and at last I greeted her well and ended in a statement
for meeting her at the earliest in the next meeting when organised.
In contrast with given situation, various nurses in respective hospitality industries
have to follow various tasks in regards with various operational work of the workforce.
Communication is a Latin word which means ‘to share’. It is the sharing of information

between different individuals (Mottis, Herzig and Auwerx, 2019). It includes the sharing of
ideas, concepts, imaginations, behaviours and written content. Communication is simply
defined as the transfer of information from one place to another. This transfer of
information can be conducted in different ways (Raposo and Stahl, 2019). Therefore,
communication plays an important role in ensuring various goals and objectives of the firm
for its completion in given resources of the firm and within given time framework in an
organisational structure. In the given context, at first I was little scare to report the issue
with the authority of my given company. But after concerns with my various colleges and
high professionals in the workforce. Communication is a simple process, yet showing
complexity in some aspects. Different ways of communication and the distances over
which one is required to transfer the information make the process complicate.
At last it can be said that communication plays an important role in evaluating
various roles and responsibilities that is to be played in the given organisational structure
and is also helpful for completion of desired objectives and aims of an organisation by
ensuring limited use of natural resources and within the given time frame work provided to
the workforce.
Gibbs's reflective cycle
The nurse associate was able to highlight what emotions were forming during the
recovery phase by using the appropriate model. During this time, the relevant nurse
associate was able to assess and comprehend the root cause of the issue, which was a
lack of communication. If patient family has contacted hospital staff it would have not been
an issue (Simamora and Fathi, 2019). Due felt scared to speak up as this was a new
challenge that was being observed by the myself being a nurse. As being a nurse

associate, I was very sacred to give any indication to the authority which is causing issue
for enhancing daily operations of the institute. However, with combination with other
associates and by concerning with healthcare professionals, I was able to report the
problem with the authorities of hospital and was also able to establish effective
communication in the workforce. As in contrast to the respective model, in the process of
various instance which is to be aimed at defining effective communication between various
individuals which are being coordinating together various operational activities in an
organisational structure. This model is a good way to work through an experience. This
can be either a stand-alone experience or a situation you go through frequently, for
example meetings with a team you have to collaborate with (Faheem and et. al., 2018).
Gibbs originally advocated its use in repeated situations, but the stages and principles
apply equally well for single experiences too. If done with a stand-alone experience, the
action plan may become more general and look at how you can apply your conclusions in
the future. Therefore, this model framework provides efficiency of efforts being produced in
an organisational structure and forms communication at the best priority to ensure
effective working of the workforce by avoiding any sort of miscommunication which leads
to duplication or wastage of various efforts that are being produced by respective
individual in an organisational structure (Werder and et. al., 2018).

CONCLUSION
By analysing the above presented reflective report, it could be concluded that,
communication plays an important role effective conduction of daily life tasks in an
individual life cycle. As in the report, due to failure for establishing communication with
care company that patient will not be able to returning back to care home at the decided
discharge date. However, a nurse took the opportunity and contacted the concern authority
of care company and reported the respective issue. Therefore, it could be said that
communication is a complicated process in which various aspects needs to considered
while establishing communication. Various models is being used in the above report which
seeks about the importance of communication.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Hovland, C. I. and Lumsdaine, A. A., 2017. Experiments on mass communication.
Princeton University Press.
Lapidoth, A., 2017. A foundation in digital communication. Cambridge University Press.
Babe, R., 2020. Canadian communication thought. University of Toronto Press.
Mottis, A., Herzig, S. and Auwerx, J., 2019. Mitocellular communication: Shaping health
and disease. Science, 366(6467), pp.827-832.
Faheem, M. and et. al., 2018. Smart grid communication and information technologies in
the perspective of Industry 4.0: Opportunities and challenges. Computer Science
Review, 30, pp.1-30.
Raposo, G. and Stahl, P.D., 2019. Extracellular vesicles: a new communication
paradigm?. Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, 20(9), pp.509-510.
Simamora, R.H. and Fathi, A., 2019. The Influence of Training Handover based SBAR
Communication for Improving Patients Safety. Indian journal of public health
research & development, 10(9).
Werder, K.P. and et. al., 2018. Strategic communication as an emerging interdisciplinary
paradigm. International Journal of Strategic Communication, 12(4), pp.333-351.