The Role Of Effective Communication In Enhancing Patient Care

Analysis of the Data

In the present scenario, data is obtained from Metropolitan Health by conducting the Consumer Assessments of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) Hospital Survey. This survey was completed by the patients of the Metropolitan facility. The survey tool that is used to collect the data for the evaluation of organizational communication is a standardized data collection instrument for publicly reporting assessments of unhealthy people regarding hospital care (Elliott et al., 2009). The CAHPS survey tool is also used to evaluate the operational issues and the risks related to them, such as loss of funding for the organization, loss of a number of patients, and loss of organizational reputation in comparison to competitor facilities. This tool helps the stakeholders and organizational leaders to see where improvement is needed. The main problems that were evaluated from the data consist of patients having issues while making appointments with doctors, lack of courtesy from the hospital staff, and the inability of the patients to ask questions from their healthcare providers.

Communication Best Practices

According to the information collected from the CAHPS survey tool, Metropolitan Health is currently facing numerous challenges. These challenges concern the quality of patient care and the issues related to Metropolitan. Moreover, these issues concern ineffective communication practices, including a lack of courtesy from hospital staff and the inability of unhealthy people to ask necessary questions from the care providers present in the facility. To cope with these issues, I have planned certain strategic recommendations that can be incorporated to improve these challenging situations.

To address the issue of patients’ inability to ask questions from their care providers, I recommend adding a discussion period of at least 15 minutes at the end of each appointment with the doctor where patients or their attendants could be able to discuss issues or questions about patients’ health, diagnosis methods, and treatment options. There can be many other reasons alongside staff’s lack of courtesy that patients find it difficult to communicate with their providers in an effective manner. The implementation of this recommendation to the organization’s strategy would allow patients to have the allocated time with the physicians to ask questions about their appointments, as well as allow doctors and nurses to address concerns related to patient’s health (Pun, 2021).

Another issue that patients face is difficulty making appointments with their doctors or physicians, which delays their diagnosis and treatment process. I recommend that an online portal should be designed and launched for the organization to facilitate patients in the appointment-making process. This would allow patients to make appointments by themselves with their desired doctor. However, for this to be done, additional data on patients’ diagnoses and treatment history would be required to set up a database for the care facility. There is also a need to collect data on why patients face difficulty making and scheduling their appointments, as this is a major issue for the unhealthy population surrounding the care facility.

In addition, another problem that patients of Metropolitan Health face is the lack of courtesy and empathy from the staff, which adds to further suffering on the part of the patients. The best strategy to address this issue is to train healthcare staff on etiquette to help them better communicate with patients. Moreover, staff could be provided with training on best communication practices to improve the quality of communication between patients and healthcare providers, which would subsequently improve the delivery of care within and outside of the organization (Watson et al., 2015).

Stakeholders

Every organization that exists and has a certain operational framework involves a number of stakeholders to continue in the market in the long run. In this scenario, the stakeholders involved in the Metropolitan health are the owners of the facility, organizational leaders, community leaders, employees or care staff, and volunteers. They all play a significant role in the organization, from implementing the mission and vision of the organization to improving the communicative practices and quality of care provided to the patients. It needs to be understood that if the organization does not communicate effectively with the stakeholders and does not enforce best communication practices among the staff, there is a risk of it not meeting the set objectives for patient outcomes, leading to a reduction in patient satisfaction with the facility.

Communication Strategies

The implementation of effective communicative strategies is very important in the field of healthcare because patient care cannot be done without effective communication. In the healthcare facility, when patients and staff cannot communicate with each other, it leads to the matter of life or death. Therefore, effective communication is necessary for the patients as well as the staff to communicate in a manner that is purposeful for patients, staff, organizational leaders, and stakeholders (Mocydlarz-Adamcewicz, 2021). Stakeholders can create and implement an effective plan to have a better understanding of the needs of the patients as well as requirements for the delivery of the best possible care. Stakeholders are also recommended to hold a weekly or biweekly meeting to check in and see the progress of adopted communication practices and the patient outcomes as a result of the implementation of such strategies.

Conclusion

In sum, the adoption and implementation of an effective communication plan can resolve many problems and mitigate risks that surround the area of patient care. The use of a patient survey as a data collection instrument is a great way for organizations to look into the depths of the areas where the organization needs improvement, as a number of problems Metropolitan Health is facing revolve around ineffective communication practices and the inability to communicate between patients and the staff of the care facility. The recommendations put forward for mitigation of the problems would help the organization and stakeholders further improve upon the vision and mission statement of Metropolitan Health.

References

Elliott, M. N., Zaslavsky, A. M., Goldstein, E., Lehrman, W., Hambarsoomians, K., Beckett, M. K., & Giordano, L. (2009). Effects of survey mode, patient mix, and nonresponse on CAHPS® hospital survey scores. Health Services Research, 44(2p1), 501–518.

Mocydlarz-Adamcewicz, M. (2021). Effective communication between hospital staff and patients in compliance with personal data protection regulations. Reports of Practical Oncology and Radiotherapy, 26(6), 833–838.

Pun, J. (2021). Factors associated with nurses’ perceptions, their communication skills and the quality of clinical handover in the Hong Kong context. BMC Nursing, 20(1), 1–8.

Watson, B. M., Manias, E., Geddes, F., Della, P., & Jones, D. (2015). An analysis of clinical handover miscommunication using a language and social psychology approach. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 34(6), 687–701.