Effective Communication Research Paper

Effective communication skills are important in the healthcare field. It can help establish relationships between healthcare workers and patients. There are many reasons why effective communication skills are important such as: patient condition, discussing treatments, relaying diet orders, relaying medications, speaking with family members, patient and family education and teaching, dealing with difficult patients, and explaining condition, diagnosis and treatments. In an effort to increase the quality of patient handoffs, both written and verbal hand-offs need to be standardized. The Joint Commission requires all health care providers to "implement a standardized approach to handoff communications including an opportunity to ask and respond

The house supervisor and DON were standing by the nurses station, so Nurse A asked if one of them could do the admission, since she was still administering medications and treatments to the other residents. They agreed to help. At 1500, it was change of shift. Nurse A gave report to Nurse W, and relayed that there was a new admit and the admission was being done by the DON and house supervisor. A brief assessment on the new resident was done upon administering medications. Nurse W then had the next 2 days off. Upon returning to work, the house supervisor asked Nurse W why the admission had not been completed. Nurse W told her that she was told by Nurse A that it was being done by her (the house supervisor) and the DON. The house supervisor stated she only agreed to input the medications. Nurse W had to then do a full assessment (which was inaccurate, being 3 days late) and all the other admission assessments, as well as all the documentation. It came down to the poor resident being in the facility for 3 days, without any full assessments being done, and no-one knew the resident’s history and the medications had been put in the computer incorrectly. Fortunately, there was no harm

The doctors ordered blood work for the resident. The results were sent to the home via fax, instead of the LTC facility. The results of the blood test showed low sodium levels. The LTC facility never received the fax and did not follow up, they were not given any physician’s orders regarding medical care for the resident. The resident began having edema in her arms, legs and face. She was sent to the emergency room for treatment and released back to the LTC facility a couple of days later. A few days later the LTC staff noticed that the resident was experiencing shortness of breath, her speech was slurred, and she seemed very confused, so they transferred her back to the ER. Doctors at the hospital diagnosed her with CHF and respiratory distress, and she died shortly