Personal and Professional Healthcare Communication, Essay Example

The medical field is a multi-billion dollar industry that millions of people rely on to ensure that the appropriate health care is provided for each person, family member, friend, and acquaintance.  A retrospective Australian survey of hospital admissions found that communication problems were the most common cause of preventable disability or death, and these problems were almost twice as common as those that were caused by inadequate medical skill (Coiera, 1998, p. 673).  In other words, the problems that we face in the medical field are very rarely a lack of poor training or medical skills, but they can usually be attributed to poor communication among medical professionals and patients.

Healthcare communication must first be defined in order to understand the benefits that good communication or consequences of poor communication can have on a medical setting.  Communication is the act of expressing ideas, feelings, or concepts to another person through written, verbal, or behavioral actions.  Therefore, healthcare communication is the act of expressing these concepts in a manner that is crucial for medical efficiency and advancement.  Healthcare communication can take place between medical professionals or between a patient or family and a medical professional.  Either way, efficient information must be shared so that the true gravity of the situation can be understood by the patient and he or she can choose the medical treatment that would be most beneficial.  Communication between nurses and doctors, or between two or more doctors on the same staff, must also be efficient in order to avoid mistreatment or medical errors by the medical staff.  When dealing with people’s lives, it is important to communicate treatments and medical processes as detailed as possible.

Many medical professionals do not realize that they are working in a team, where one person’s direct or indirect actions can greatly impact the ability for another person to do his or her job. There seems to be a need for individual workers to consider carefully the effects of their communication behavior on their own efficiency and effectiveness as well as on that of others (Coiera, 1998, p. 676). Careful consideration and cooperation in a fast-paced environment are essential to the entire medical staff being successful.  It can be argued that at times people put their own priorities ahead of those of the team, and when this happens the patient becomes the greatest victim because errors occur.  In addition to consideration and cooperation, each medical professional is required to move at a fast pace and continuing to move throughout most of the day to cover as many patients as possible throughout the day. This can cause a very large problem when nursing staff or medical professionals are trying to reach doctors that are on the move and may not always have a pager or cell phone readily available.  In a study performed to examine the multiple communication problems that can occur in a hospital, researchers found that “the mobility of staff and the difficulty contacting ‘moving targets’ suggest that support for mobility through the use of wireless technology, such as cellular telephones, might be beneficial” (Coiera, 1998, p. 676).  Many hospitals and healthcare providers are looking into investing in new innovative ways to improve upon the area of telecommunications to send messages as quickly as possible. “One estimate suggested that the American health system could save $30 billion a year with improved telecommunications” (Coiera, 1998, p. 673). It is clear that further communication advancements are necessary to advance the medical field to improve communications and help solve budgetary problems that are caused by mistakes or errors in providing healthcare.

However, many of the communication problems that people face every day are caused by simple errors in writing, speaking or listening that people use so much in their everyday lives that the behaviors have become automatic.  These automatic behaviors become rushed in a fast-paced environment, and people begin to anticipate what to say or what is being heard to make assumptions and make conversations end faster.  According to Woods (2002), there are eight steps that medical professionals, and everyday individuals, can use to improve the quality of their communication:

Avoid rushing in with advice when someone is sharing. Don’t pretend to listen when you’re not listening.  Don’t be in the future of a conversation, or in other words do not assume what the person will say and how you will respond. Be a patient listener; sick people tend to dwell on their problems and it can be frustrating.  Put down papers, glasses, pamphlets, pens, books, etc. Avoid glancing around the room; keep the eye contact on the person you are speaking with.  Be patient as you try to keep the conversation moving.  Be sensitive to how physically close or far you are from the person who is ill so that you can hear properly without being offensive to a person’s private space (Woods, 2002, p. 1).

Each of these steps can be executed within every conversation, but they may take a little time and practice to implement. Time and patience are two commodities that are rarely available in a fast-paced medical environment, but it is the responsibility of the medical staff to efficiently communicate with respect to avoid confusion and additional problems.

Communication can also hold different meanings depending on the situation of the conversation.  Medical communication practices are constantly being studied to help reduce the presence of simple mistakes that can cause lives or increase the risk for errors.  Researchers in healthcare communication have argued that communication can reflect social structure, or specifically define the ways we talk with our doctors within the social structure of the doctor-patient relationship.  In other words, it reflects the distribution of power in the relationship as it has shifted from the doctor to the patient (Greenfield, 2001, p. 1).  It used to be that doctors were the medical experts and the patient had very little grounds for speaking except to tell the doctor where they hurt. Today, with the increase in malpractice law suits, advanced medical knowledge of patients, and the high costs of healthcare the power has shifted to the patient in the relationship. The social structure has changed, and oftentimes people are too concerned with who has the power during communication rather than treating each other as equals, which is where the social structure needs to shift.  If both individuals in the conversation treat each other as equals and do not consider power, there will be fewer instances for assumptions, miscommunication, and a sense of pride or power that can increase communication errors in a simple conversation. “Nevertheless, it remains important for doctors and patients to communicate in ways that enable them to arrive at mutually agreeable healthcare decisions. For many people, though, this type of communication is not something that will occur automatically” (Greenfield, 2001, p. 1).

According to Boatman (2004), there are over sixteen different forms of therapeutic communication that medical professionals can utilize to help ease the pain, and improve or possibly even cure the patient from minor diseases (p. 1).  Three of these therapeutic communicative techniques are empathy, sharing hope and sharing humor. “Empathy is the ability to understand and accept another person’s reality, to accurately perceive feelings, and to communicate this understanding to others.  Sharing hope is communicating a sense of possibility. Sharing humor is to bring hope and joy to the situation” (p. 1). The medical benefits of humor and therapeutic communication are not scientifically calculated, but they have shown signs of improving health within sick patients and marked reduction in pain.  Nurses and doctors alike can use therapeutic communication as a valuable tool to accompany the medical care that is being provided to actively treat a disease.

References

Boatman, M. (2004). Therapeutic communication techniques. Retrieved on October 7, 2009, from Web site: http://www.mac.edu/faculty/MarilynBoatman/handouts/Communication%20Techniques%20handouts.doc

Coiera, E., & Tombs, V. (1998). Communication behaviours in a hospital setting: an observational study. BMJ, 316, 673-677.

Greenfield, J.A. (2001, July). Communication: what’s the big deal?. Retrieved on October 6, 2009, from Web site: http://www.healthcarecommunication.org/hcr/v1n2-communication.pdf

Northouse, L. L., & Northouse, P. G. (1998). Health communication: Strategies for health professional (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall Pearson.

Woods, D. (2002, July). Eight communication ideas. Retrieved on October 7, 2009, from Web site: http://www.healthcarecommunication.org/hcr/v2n2-eight-ideas.pdf