The purpose of this paper is to discuss the seven principles of patient-clinician communication and how I apply three of the seven principles to interactions with patients I care for. Next, this paper will discuss the three methods being used to improve interdisciplinary communication and what my area of practice is currently utilizing. Lastly, this paper will discuss the ethical principles that can be applied to issues in patient-clinician communication, the importance of ethics in communication and how patient safety can be influenced by team communication.
Principles of Communication According to Ohio University (2018), the goal of health care is to improve patients ' conditions with the help of a strong patient-clinician relationship.
…show more content…
Interdisciplinary communication can greatly impact patient safety. According to research done by Jarrod Shapiro (2017), 65% of reported medical errors were caused by ineffective communication and is among the top three causes of sentinel events. There are three great methods being used to improve interdisciplinary communication. The first is SBAR. SBAR is acronym that stands for situation, background, assessment, and recommendation (Shapiro, 2017). SBAR can be used by all members of the health care team including patient care technicians, nurses, and physicians. When giving report to another member of the healthcare team, the clinician should explain what is happening at this time (situation), important information related to the situation (background), subjective and objective data the clinician has gathered (assessment), and the clinician 's recommendation on the care for the patient (Shapiro, 2017). Team headlines takes place at the beginning of a shift and updates or informs all health care team members on the plan of care for a patient for shift (Ohio University, 2018). The facility I am employed by does a "shift huddle" prior to every shift. All oncoming nurses, scrub technicians and unit clerks meet in the locker room and the shift supervisor goes over important information related to the unit, then a report sheet is passed out to each oncoming nurse with information about each patient currently on the labor and delivery unit. Next, the supervisor tells each nurse what their patient assignment is for that shift and anything else that needs to happen during the shift, such as stocking rooms, IV carts, equipment checks that need completed, etc. The last form of interdisciplinary communication is multidisciplinary rounds (Ohio University, 2018). This is when all members of the health care team caring for each patient including