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Effective Communication In Healthcare

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Communication is any exchange of information between a sender and a receiver. It is critical for teams to encourage open communication flow between team members to operate most effectively (Solas, 2008). Healthcare is complex and unpredictable. Professionals from different disciplines are involved in providing care and each provider have their own ideas about what the patient needs. Differences in education and culture between professionals result in different communication styles. Communication issues with physicians are a contributing factor in medical errors. During acute care stays, communication failures lead to medical errors and increase the length of hospital stays. Studies showed that 36 percent of procedures had errors, not because of inadequate skills but, due to lack of proper communication and teamwork (Manser, 2008).
Effective communication and teamwork are essential for hospitals to be able to bring out the best treatments and health outcomes. Regardless of education, background, and culture, healthcare teams need to have effective communication skills, and be on the same page with each other. In healthcare, patients’ health outcomes depend on the team …show more content…
Implementing huddles can bring great benefits for the team. Teams can communicate face-to-face early in the shift, going through the important highlights of the day’s tasks in this quick meeting. Encouraging junior staff to speak up, involving them, and reinforcing senior members to be supportive and fully listen would strengthen the team. All of these processes would bring clarification on the issues, immediately response to questions, and involve staff in the decision-making. Also, by setting up these standard brief meetings, everybody would be aware of the updates and important information passing along right

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