Mayo Clinic: Communication Strategies for Reducing Medication Errors

This report addresses the critical issue of medication errors within the Mayo Clinic healthcare workplace, emphasizing the impact of poor communication between doctors and patients. The report identifies language barriers, social settings, communication mediums, and physical settings as key obstacles to effective information transfer, leading to medication errors. The proposed solution involves adopting clear and simple language, avoiding medical jargon, and utilizing standardized communication mediums. The report recommends that doctors use both written and verbal communication, undertake communication skills courses, and create favorable settings for patient interaction. Furthermore, it suggests the implementation of perioperative briefings and standardized communication tools to foster an environment where patients feel comfortable expressing their concerns. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of commitment from both doctors and patients to ensure proper medication and patient safety.

Communication in Healthcare
Student's Name:
Student's ID:

1
MEMO
TO: The Supervisor, Mayo Clinic
FROM: (Student's Name)
DATE: 01/10/2019
SUBJECT: Issue of Patient Care in Healthcare Workplace
Mayo Clinic is currently facing the issue of medication errors quite often, and it is important to
prevent these errors for the safety of the patients. The problem identified is the medication errors
within the workplace and it is important as they generate crucial impact on patient’s health.
These issues have significant implications for identifying them to improve the errors of clinical
practice.
Verbal and non-verbal communicational methods are used to resolve the medication errors. The
poor communication between doctors and patients is the main reason for medication errors in our
healthcare workplace. Whether written or verbal, these problems are arising in the health care
system and it affects the doctors along with the patients. Poor communication consists of
language barriers, social settings, mediums of communication and physical settings. The
interaction between the doctors and patients sometimes does not work since the patients are
unable to understand the medical language of the doctors. The patients are not feeling
comfortable in the social settings to exchange their feelings while explaining their treatments.
The mediums of communication are mostly non-mediated, and so the patients are not able to
understand the doctors (Nanji, Patel, Shaikh, Seger, & Bates, 2016). The physical settings like
background noises from TVs, other healthcare employees and other patients are the obstacles in
the transfer of the medical information.
For solving this problem, we have adopted a new solution for the safety of the patients. The
doctors in our clinic have started adopting effective communication using appropriate, clear and
simple language while communicating with the patients. They are beginning to avoid the medical
terms and using only well-known abbreviations for avoiding misinterpretations of their
information. Standardized communication mediums are carried out between doctors and patients
and patient care and high-quality health approaches have been given much significance.
The benefit of effective communication by the doctors is that the high rate of medication errors
can be reduced in our workplace and also the safety of the patients can be ensured and enhanced.
It can deliver quality healthcare services. The doctors can have standardized communication
tools for creating an atmosphere where the patients could speak up, express their concerns as
well as share the information. The doctors can have several options for communication strategies
like the perioperative briefings could decrease the probability of medication errors and help them
to communicate effectively (Smith et al., 2016).
It is recommended that the doctors must use both the written and verbal communication while
communicating with the patients since this combination delivers numerous channels to exchange
the information. The doctors must give considerable efforts to dedicate to the courses for

2
improving their communications capabilities. The settings must also be considerably quiet, and
attention is required for ensuring a smooth exchange of medical information. The social settings
must be favorable so that both the doctors and patients could feel comfortable while explaining
their treatments. It is also suggested that both the patients and doctors must be committed to
efficient communication so that the proper medication as well as the safety of the patients could
be realized quickly.

3
References
Nanji, K. C., Patel, A., Shaikh, S., Seger, D. L., & Bates, D. W. (2016). Evaluation of
perioperative medication errors and adverse drug events. The Journal of the American
Society of Anesthesiologists, 124(1), 25-34.
Smith, K. J., Handler, S. M., Kapoor, W. N., Martich, G. D., Reddy, V. K., & Clark, S. (2016).
Automated communication tools and computer-based medication reconciliation to
decrease hospital discharge medication errors. American Journal of Medical
Quality, 31(4), 315-322.