Abstract
Communication or lack thereof in a healthcare setting has been identified as the major cause of safety issues such as delay of patient care, medication errors and patient provider dissatisfaction. Breakdowns in communication between care providers often results in medical errors many of which are avoidable if proper and timely communication channels were in place. As well we know that the common goal between healthcare providers is to heal the patient, therefore it is imperative that joint collaboration exist. The introduction of mobile voice communications between healthcare providers is probably the solution to this healthcare gap. effective communication between healthcare providers is very important for positive patient outcomes. In the main body section, I will cover the need and the state of current situation in hospital facilities and a some more overviews of what the interventions to the current problem will be.
Mobile voice communication technology in healthcare settings Healthcare settings are environments where frequent communication between healthcare professionals and the interdisciplinary parties happens. Recent studies have shown that electronic communication technology is having a huge role to play in the efficient operations of healthcare organizations (Forrester et al., 2011).
The Term Paper on Healthcare Communication
... willing to indulge information. Patient and caregiver roles should have equal value in healthcare communication. “Providers and clients should view healthcare as a partnership in ... inviting and seemed rather gloomy. The environmental setting of any healthcare setting can damper or enlighten a patient from the start. As Vivian was ...
Identifying the power of technology has really changed the healthcare landscape in ways of day to day operations. Of most recent, most hospitals are struggling and running against the clock to have the prestigious badge of magnet recognition. To achieve this level, there has to better ways in which healthcare providers communicate in order to reduce the negative events which lead to poor patient outcomes. In the study conducted in 2011 St. Agnes hospital in the city of Baltimore, Forrester et al, (2011) established that the most important positive outcomes from implementation of voice communication technology in practice is the technology’s contribution to the saving communication time and increasing the safety healthcare professionals provide to their clients.
Further, they pointed out that this technology may reduce noise levels in acute care settings and that the overall time completing patient requests, the speed and quality of communication between patients and providers and thus increased satisfaction for both the healthcare consumers and providers. Healthcare organizations and providers have been facing tremendous pressure from bodies like the accreditation commissions (JAHCO) and state regulatory bodies to improve patient care and hence eliminate common errors which otherwise could have been avoided. Unfortunately, the healthcare environment is evolving at a very fast speed that the healthcare providers are unable to parallel this developments. There is no single solution which can address this issues but rather taking some simple measures at least to start the process (Authier, 2010).
In this paper I will explore one of the avenues my healthcare organization may take to solve some of these challenges by improving healthcare provider communications. Assessment Most of the hospital staff constitutes of nurses amongst the total employees of these healthcare organizations.
They serve as the primary care providers and are the common liaison between clients and everything which revolves around patients during the course of hospital stay. Coordinating patient care is a very crucial role for the nursing staff. Therefore in order for these staff to be more effective, it is important that they have access to communication technologies that deliver the right information to the right person at the right time (Authier, 2010).
The Essay on Technology and Communication 4
Technology and Communication Information systems and communication technology are significant tools of contemporary management. These tools constitute the communication infrastructure between organizations and their geographically dispersed markets. Global information networks enable collaborative sharing of information to support decision making and to facilitate resource managing. These ...
Unfortunately in my organization, we are still stuck with the good old practices and technologies which often make it tough for healthcare providers to have a high efficiency level in their communication. Some of these technologies we are still using are centered around our nurses stations and thus time consuming. More often these practices take away nurses from patient care role to a messenger role.
We nurses understand that effective communication enhances the nurses’ ability to be proactive in clinical situations and thus improve our overall productivity in our daily patient care routines. My emphasis here is that, the current technologies we have usually include bulky phones, several pagers and centralized telephones around the nurses’ station which requires that nurses have to physically be there in order to communicate with other providers. Clearly in my organization, mobility is one other huddles limiting effective communication between healthcare professionals. The current arrangement we have usually ends up eating up the time nurses have to finish their daily assignments because much of the time is spent probably trekking back and forth to the nurses’ station.
Take for example the current situation, when a patient is admitted to the emergency room, a nurse coordinates with the hospital bed manager to locate an empty bed in order to assign the new patient. Before the implementation my proposed technology, the hospital bed manager was reached by the nurse by paging her via the overhead intercom paging system or using the personal pager system to locate her. This is a hectic procedure and the fear of the unknown engulfs the nursing g staff. Usually it takes about at least 20minutes for the bed manger to return the call. Literally speaking, about 2 hours per day are lost in the process of trying to coordinate care within the facility causing tremendous patient care delay. You may ask me, “What is the problem with using pagers and other methods currently available?”
Simply, pagers are very small and contain a very small display screen hence lack of context. This means that there is a limited number of messages and which can be sending and held in a pager. They are very hectic to work with and retrieve messages. Background Mobile hands free communication technology is relatively new in healthcare environment. This kind of technology was usually has been used in military battle grounds. At the moment, we can harness this technology and make it precise to use in small settings. Clinical environments are dynamic workplaces in which care workers should effectively communicate to make effective healthcare decisions during critical times (Richardson & Ash, 2010).
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Peplau (1952) observed the nurse as a fundamental tool for change whilst explaining how powerful the nurse-patient relationship is. The nurse approaches the relationship with understanding and experience obtained personally through their lives but also through their training and work. Generally, it is considered the more training and work experience a nurse has, the more therapeutically effective ...
When a patient is admitted let say for example from the ER, usually a nurse makes a decision to admit the patient. To make this decision, the nurse must leave the patient and walk to the nurses’ station and see if she can communicates with the unit secretary about the decision to admit the patient.
The unit secretary then goes ahead ad pages the bed manager and waits for response. It is unclear how long it will take before we get the response; usually there is a huge delay while waiting. Finally if we are lucky, the bed manger calls us back, if the unit secretary has moved away from the desk, one of the nurses puts her on hold until she comes back. When the unit secretary is back, she explains to the bed manger what the decision is about the waiting patient. Ok, the nurse manager then hangs up and tells the unit clerk that she will call us back after she finds our request. The wait continues until the bed manager calls back. Good luck, the unit secretary is at the desk and she answers the phone. Bed manager delivers the message the bed will be available soon after. Then, the unit clerk leaves station and walks around unit to look for the nurse and deliver the message.
The nurse decides to move the patient to the holding place and waits for the bed manager to call back for availability of the bed. Now the ward pages the bed manager when the bed is actually is free. Bed manager calls back ward in response to pager and then she calls the Emergency Department station to inform the nurse of bed availability. The unit clerk goes to the holding space and notifies the nurse of the new developments and finally patient moved to ward!
This kind of information delay not only affects communication and ultimately patient care but in turn have a direct correlation to patient satisfaction (Straka, 2010) Proposal of solution There is always an agreement that Healthcare information technology and communication trends and their likely effects can improve healthcare quality. As the scope and practice of nurses grows, communication techniques for nurses have to change in order to adapt to the high volume of increased traffic of stimuli in diverse environments (Unlutrurk, 2012).
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The issues disc used in this article are pertinent not just to nu ring professionals but potential patients as well, which means everyone. The general consensus seems to be divided into two camps; the nurses and the administration. While both sides have adamant arguments for their points it is imperative for all of us that a solution be found. The topics covered are related to legislation, current ...
A significant amount of walking is done by nurses to access communications either on a stationary telephone desk or finding people face to face. Usually this time which is spent walking by nursing is stolen from direct patient care time (NEC, 2011).simply because mobility is rampart; achieving optimal productivity requires solutions that improve real-time collaboration healthcare workers. There is no healthcare worker who works with patients in isolation. For instance, nurses are members of a multidisciplinary team that collaborates with other teams to render the best care for patients.
My proposal solution here is that after the implementation of the mobile voice technology, healthcare providers will have a mobile device that allows them to communicate regardless in what part of the hospital they are located. Let’s say for example a bed manager wants to connect with the nurse, they will do so directly rather than through a centralized phone at the nurse’s station. These communications will occur in a timely and the information will have currency in it, besides currency, the information will be accurate and complete which in return will lead to clear direction in patient care. In addition of voice, the technology in question here will have other methods of communication to send alerts and other requests in different ways. Authier, (2010) notes that clinical mobility technologies are usually the most visible evidence of effective nursing communications.
If done right, this will allow for example nurses to spend more time taking care of patients and less waiting for calls or other information to arrive at the nurses station. Healthcare technology like vocera for example gives the organization staff mobility without jeopardizing accessibility. They collaborate presence, messaging, voice and location identification thus enhancing providers productivity environments which are very mobile .These kind of technologies are available easily nowadays to give healthcare providers the ability to communicate easily between themselves and other multidisciplinary teams whenever and anywhere communication is needed. If the organization can be able to implement this technology, then the era of for example the nurses were being tethered to the nurse’s station waiting for physicians to return the pager will be gone.
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President Elect-Obama (2009), stated in a speech at George Mason University: To improve the quality of our health care while lowering its cost, we will make the immediate investments necessary to ensure that within five years, all of America’s medical records are computerized. This will cut waste, eliminate red tape, and reduce the need to repeat expensive medical tests. But it just won’t save ...