Analyzing Communication Strategies for Patient Safety in Healthcare

This essay examines the critical role of effective communication strategies in maintaining patient safety within healthcare settings. It presents a case study of a cardiac patient where communication errors led to medication errors, specifically involving potassium dosage. The essay identifies risk factors using the Patient-Safe Transformational Model of Communication, highlighting issues such as illegible handwriting and inadequate patient handover. It then proposes nursing interventions to improve communication, including electronic documentation, standardized handover techniques like SBAR, and electronic medication reconciliation to reduce errors and enhance patient safety. The discussion emphasizes the importance of clear communication between healthcare providers and patients to create a safe and healthy environment, concluding that effective communication models and tools are essential for minimizing medical errors and improving patient outcomes.

Running head: COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES
Communication Strategies
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES
In case of maintaining a safety environment for the patients in a health care sector it is
very crucial to maintain an effective communication strategies. Moreover, it is observed that, the
patient’s perception of good quality health services is greatly dependent on the quality of
communication among the health care team and the patients. In a health care setting an effective
communication is important for the health care providers in order to protect their patients, saving
the total treatment costs, reducing the cases of medical errors. However, a tiny gap in
communication may cost a huge lose to the patients and health care providers (Schuster, 2010).
In this essay, a case study of a cardiac illness patient is depicted and there was communication
error during the treatment of this patients. In the later part of the essay, the risk factors in that
incident was identified with the help of Patient-Safe Transformational Model of Communication
and after that, the implementation process of patient safe communication strategies are discussed
in a brief manner.
Case Scenario
In a clinical nursing practice a situation was found where the errors were identified and
this condition might alter the safety of the patients. In that situation it was observed that a
patient was admitted in the hospital with cardiac illness. Doctor instructed to reduce the dose of
potassium for that patient. However, due to lack of communication the instruction was not
implemented till the evening by the nursing personnel. As a result, the nurses had given wrong

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doses of potassium causing medication errors. The role of potassium is cardiac contraction is
very crucial as it has serious role in generating the action potential of the cardiac muscle. After
the depolarization phase, the cardiac muscle starts to repolarize and in this phase the opening of
K+ channels occur and the repolarization takes place. The excessive amount of K+ in the blood
can cause serious consequences such as heart failure. According to the study of Thomsen et al.
(2018), it was observed that increased level of potassium level that is hyperkalemia is associated
with the heart failure. Moreover, the risk of reduced kidney function was also observed that. The
alteration in the conduction system can also be observed in hyperkalemia (Sarwar et al., 2016).
In case of this patient the medication error can cause problems such as cardiac arrhythmia,
altered functioning of the conduction system. Thus it can be said that, the medication error by the
nurses had altered safety of the cardiac patient in the hospital.
The Patient Safe Transformational Model of Communication
In maintaining safe condition for the patient it is very important to follow an effective
communication process in the hospital care setting. The patient safe transformational model of
communication can be very effective in case of the patient described above. According to the
communication model, the depicted situation can be put under the biological and professional
context of that particular model as due to the medication error the patient might face biological
problems and the error occurred due to the lack of professionalism of the staffs. The risk factors

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associated with that situation might be related to the illegible handwriting, heavy accent of the
nurses as these factors are associated with the lack of communication (Schuster, 2010). In the
case study, it was observed that, the error occurred due to the lack of communication during
patient handover. The nurses had not conveyed the information regarding the new instruction of
the doctor that is the patient would be given a lower dose of potassium. Due to this error by the
nurses, the patient was given wrong dose of potassium and as a result the patient might face life
threatening consequences such as cardiac arrhythmia.
Nursing Interventions for Maintaining safety communication
In order to secure the patient safety communication in this situation a few strategies can be
implemented. Those strategies are as follows-
1) As there was lack of communication during the handover of the patient, so
documentation method that is written instruction of the doctor can be given by hand or
electronically to the nurses. The electronic version of the instructed document will also
eliminate the problem of illegible hand writing issue. As a result, the medication errors
can be avoided even after the lack of communication among the nursing staffs. The study
of Hron et al. (2015) showed the effectiveness of electronic medication reconciliation had
become successful in reducing the medication errors among the admitted patients. The
study result showed significant difference in between the pre and post intervention

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condition in the hospital. It was observed that medication errors were reduced by 53%
with a P value of 0.02 (P= 0.02).
2) In the case study it was observed that, during the patient hand over, standardized medical
technique had not used. So it can be recommended that use of standardized hand over
techniques such as SBAR technique can be used. In various studies it is observed that the
use of SBAR communication technique makes the reporting process easy by reduce the
time for reporting and at the same time enhanced the effectiveness of the report.
Moreover, use of SBAR in the hospital settings make the nurses more focused and
accurate in their work. Ultimately this resulted in improvement of the patient safety by
reducing the medication errors by the nurses. Therefore, nurses also reported that, by
using the SBAR technique, the nurse-sensitive patient safety outcomes, such as patient
falls, were improved (Stewart, 2016).
Hence it can be concluded that, the communication among the nurses is very crucial as it is
directly associated with the safety of the patients. Only a safe communication between the health
care provider and the patient can create a safe and healthy environment for the patients in the
hospital. Therefore, patient safe effective communication model can be used in order to improve
the communication. Along with this, the use of SBAR techniques, documentation and electronic

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reconciliation will be very helpful to enhance the patient safety by reducing the medication
errors.
References
Hron, J. D., Manzi, S., Dionne, R., Chiang, V. W., Brostoff, M., Altavilla, S. A., ... & Harper, M.
B. (2015). Electronic medication reconciliation and medication errors. International
Journal for Quality in Health Care, 27(4), 314-319.
Sarwar, C. M., Papadimitriou, L., Pitt, B., Piña, I., Zannad, F., Anker, S. D., ... & Butler, J.
(2016). Hyperkalemia in heart failure. Journal of the American College of
Cardiology, 68(14), 1575-1589.
Schuster, P. M. (2010). Communication for nurses: How to prevent harmful events and promote
patient safety. FA Davis.
Stewart, K. R. (2016). SBAR, communication, and patient safety: An integrated literature
review. University of Tennessee at Chattanoog. Retrieved from:
https://scholar.utc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1070&context=honors-theses
[ Accessed on 12th March, 2019].
Thomsen, R. W., Nicolaisen, S. K., Hasvold, P., Garcia‐Sanchez, R., Pedersen, L., Adelborg,
K., ... & Sørensen, H. T. (2018). Elevated potassium levels in patients with congestive
heart failure: occurrence, risk factors, and clinical outcomes: a Danish population‐based
cohort study. Journal of the American Heart Association, 7(11), e008912.

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