Healthcare, like many other sectors, depends on effective communication to ensure that information sharing is appropriately done for the safety of patients and better health outcomes and for the development of effective and working relationships between the health care professionals. Besides, by the fact that nurses in their day-to-day routine have to interact with interprofessional teams, peers, and patients, they should be able to appropriately manage evidence and information and fine-tune them towards the creation of positive patient outcomes (Prip et al., 2018). The positive patient outcomes eventually come from the caring attributes of a particular culture within a healthcare organization.
Describe Caring Attributes Of The Culture Where You Currently Practice. Which Attributes Stand Out As Having A Significant Influence On Patients, Nurses, And Other Healthcare Professionals?
In the organization where I currently practice, a culture has been developed over the years that ensures that the health care professionals demonstrate caring attributes, majorly focused on and demonstrated towards the patients and, to a lesser extent, colleagues and peers. Even though our facility is a medium-sized health care center, it has the potential of growing into one of the top centers in years to come, largely thanks to the caring attributes as well as the kind of leadership. With the facility’s eyes fixed on excellence through a caring culture, the organization has been stressing that every member of staff should develop, demonstrate and maintain behaviors such as respect, teamwork, service commitment, and accountability. In support of the expected behaviors is effective communication where there is a rule of talking to each other provided the individual is within a talking distance. The members of staff are expected not to ignore each other but to engage one another through a friendly acknowledgment or just by saying hello. The strategy ensures that every staff member knows most of the people around, which boosts confidence to be more productive.
On the part of care attributes demonstrated to the patients by the staff is compassion and respect for patients. Our staff has adequate training and motivation to consider compassion as one of the care attributes that can make a patient heal faster after treatment. Our staff is keen enough to identify patients who could be having a troubled home environment and make appropriate arrangements to improve those conditions so that if the patient is discharged, then they have a better environment to recover.
How Do You See Effective Communication Relating To Patient Outcomes In This Setting? What Is The Evidence For This?
Effective communication has a substantial influence on the rapport that health healthcare professionals form with their patients as well as the caregivers since effective communication is key for building trust. Effective communication has been proved to result in superior patient satisfaction, raise patient’s psychological and functional well-being, and enhances trust between clinicians and patients. Besides, effective communication can result in improved patient outcomes in the case of some particular diseases, such as better antihypertensive medication adherence, better hyperlipidemia, and diabetes control, and lower mortality risk from diseases like coronary artery disease (Gilligan et al., 2018).
Other reports have also shown that effective communication impacts positively on some patients’ behaviors, such as improved self-efficacy of HIV medication adherence and better adjustment to a bereavement in the cancer patients’ caregivers. On the other hand, ineffective communication lowers patient compliance which can lead to higher rates of hospital readmissions as opposed to effective communication when clinicians can educate patients about the medication they should be using and the disease process.
References
Gilligan, T., Coyle, N., Frankel, R. M., Berry, D. L., Bohlke, K., Epstein, R. M., … & Baile, W. F. (2018). Patient-clinician communication: American Society of Clinical Oncology consensus guideline. Obstetrical & Gynecological Survey, 73(2), 96-97. Doi: 10.1097/01.ogx.0000530053.40106.9b
Prip, A., Møller, K. A., Nielsen, D. L., Jarden, M., Olsen, M. H., & Danielsen, A. K. (2018). The patient–healthcare professional relationship and communication in the oncology outpatient setting: A systematic review. Cancer nursing, 41(5), E11. Doi: 10.1097/NCC.0000000000000533
In a team huddle, staff members come together are the beginning of every shift and discuss the patients’ concerns, issues of safety, and updates. Communication between healthcare personnel is significant, and huddles have been shown to improve communication. A daily huddle is critical in helping to promote the optimal outcomes of the patients. It allows the nurses to have enough talking time to come together and communicate with each other concerning how to improve the awareness of the patients’ general condition in the unit and minimize the chaos that is usually associated with poor communication. Huddles help o quickly discuss the problems that may be overlooked, thus resolving them in a short time. Besides, it also allows the number of safety alerts to decrease gradually and, consequently, increase effective discharges (Rodriguez et. Al., 2015).
Although huddles are not expected to consume a lot of time, they need to last long to enable communication between the health providers. During this time, the patient’s components must be reviewed promptly, which facilitates the productivity of the shift ahead. During the huddle, it is the leaders’ responsibility to ensure there is effective communication in discussing all the necessary topics concerning the patient’s health.
It is also established that effective communication during huddles can lead to positive patient outcomes. This is because it improves the flow of information between working staff, helps develop effective intervention strategies, enhances the safety of the patients, enhances the morale of the staff, and increases patient and family satisfaction towards the healthcare services being delivered. Besides, the healthcare team’s ability to communicate effectively has a significant effect on the functional health outcomes and patient experience (Rodriguez et. Al., 2015).
Reference
Rodriguez, H. P., Meredith, L. S., Hamilton, A. B., Yano, E. M., Rubenstein, L. V. (2015). Huddle up! Health Care Management Review: Volume 40 – Issue 4 – p 286-299. Doi: 10.1097/HMR.0000000000000036
I know the question asks about our current place of practice, but I would like to use my first employer where I worked for 7+ years. It was Baptist Memorial Hospital in Southaven, Mississippi. I can’t say enough good things about this place. They always say you don’t know what you have until it’s gone and that couldn’t be truer. After working at several other hospitals and facilities, I can honestly say they set the bar high. Their mission statement and values focused on “Healing, Preaching, and Teaching”. One thing I remember being huge was the AIDET communication tool. AIDET is an acronym that stands for Acknowledge, Introduce, Duration, Explanation, and Thank. All employees were trained on this and there was constant reiteration. You could be late clocking in as long as your reason was that you were assisting a hospital guest. We were also encouraged to smile at everyone and always make eye contact. I really feel like these things made a huge difference in the hospital environment. It really felt like a happy place to work. One of the things that stood out to me the most is the involvement of the hospital pastor, Pastor Steve. He was always all over the place greeting people (guests and employees), praying with people, assisting families with meals, and doing all types of services. They even used him for humorous safety promos throughout the hospital, so guests and employees alike knew his face. I feel like these types of efforts made patients and staff feel a sense of family, community, and caring.
Baptist Memorial Hospital did a great job communicating to employees regarding surveys, HCAHPS, and even costs. We had hospital-wide quarterly meetings where we would go over all these details. They would even ask for our input on improving areas. They were big on employee input I felt like they really tried to listen. They also praised all areas including environmental services and food and nutrition (cafeteria) which I think is extremely important for hospitals to do. An area where I noticed improvements was infection control. When our hospital-acquired infection rates would go up and it was brought to everyone’s attention in these meetings, we would always see a dramatic decrease over the next 2 quarters.
Our textbook describes communication as a nursing competency. I believe it is a competency that nurses and hospitals alike, must have to be effective, safe, and efficient places of practice. Standard 9 in our textbook, lists several competencies for communication including, “Uses communication styles and methods that demonstrate caring, respect, deep listening, authenticity, and trust.” (American Nurses Association, 2015). I believe this is what the AIDET tool helped nurses do. Each acronym created a sense of care, respect, deep listening, authenticity, and trust. I also found a PowerPoint learning tool by Alta Med (n.d.) that explained how AIDET can also be used with coworkers to decrease anxiety and establish trust. I have worked at several hospitals since Baptist and have yet to experience that much care and attentiveness from a corporation.
Sunny Hanley
Alta Med. (n.d.). AIDET Overview: Why, What & How. http://paetc.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/AIDET-Training-Presentation1.pdfLinks to an external site.
American Nurses Association. (2015). Nursing: scope and standards of practice (3rd ed.).
