3 Valuable Ways to Improve Hospital Communication
Hospitals are large units and it is frustrating when huge units are not in synchronized with each other and there are a lot of communications break down. Hospital communication must be synchronized with easy and timely conveyed. Especially when emergency cases come in the hospital that time effective communication is essential. Thus, health care organizations need to take initiative to resolve all the communication issues and make the hospital working again properly. Sometimes, due to unclear or not adequate communication is frustrating and it can be dangerous when it comes to taking care of the patient.
How do you take the challenge of improving hospital communication?
The challenge to improve and make the communication in the hospital is quite difficult but then when achieved it can bring some of the best and substantial rewards. The healthcare organizations who have been trying to achieve the same are able to now witness the hospital gaining some increase in productivity, and other reduction costs with a higher standard of healthcare to the patients.
You need to do something that will need to comply with HITECH limits to the communication solutions that are needed in the healthcare organizations. Apart from that, whichever communications help in hospital communications, should be encouraged to improve hospital patient communications. Also, the security is the most important thing in hospital management like Cyber Security.
What are the issues when you are fostering communication in the hospital?
Whenever you are fostering the program, one of the main issues is the cost. It is not just the implementing of hospital staff communication devices but also the resources to train the staff on how you will have to use it, how to keep monitoring the solutions and overcome the issues of compliance and the cost. They also need to maintain the devices operate as they would be effective in long time communication.
It often happens in large hospitals where the communication with multiple departments is slow or broken which is why there is a great risk of the piece of information not reaching the right person on time. This is at the cost of the patient’s condition and it can sometimes lead to the death. Thus to prevent these kinds of mishaps in the hospital, there are 3 effective ways in which we can try to improve hospital communication.
The need to build strong communications is that they will help you with any kind of errors and will make sure that the nursing staff will concentrate on what they are supposed to do the best which is the patient-centered care. Here are the 3 things you need to do to maintain effective communication between the disciplines of the hospitals.
- Encourage participation in multidisciplinary rounds
When you have multidisciplinary rounds in your hospital, you should encourage that and allow the professionals to take care of the patient’s plan, the diet, daily goals and also the potential transfer or the discharge. People from different specialties have to come and discuss with the concerned department for the well being and health care of the patient. All the nurses, pharmacists, therapists, social workers should work in unison for the patient.
- Team Huddles
Team Huddles are one of the measures that the hospitals in Denver took to improve the impending issue which is the hospital communications. They created a specific tool kit and then it was open to any hospital who could use it for maximum strategy. A team huddle is short and interdisciplinary meetings that take place at the beginning of every shift. The staff members discuss the patients that need interdisciplinary care, going over issues that are affecting the work quality of an entire unit, hospital management and administration such as canteen, nonoperating elevator, malfunctioning equipment, etc.
They may also discuss the impending workload and the work of each nurse so that they don’t get overwhelmed by the work.
- Situational Breifings
This is another situation background assessment recommendation technique that helps the providers to discuss the developments of a patient’s health which may require very immediate attention. It may be about the patient’s clinical status, any sudden changes or complaints, etc. It can also be about the current diagnosis and recommendations about how the patient will be treated. It can also be about the kind of diagnosis should be given and how the patient should be treated. You can use the SBAR or the situation background assessment recommendation technique that can ensure that every team member present there has the same information whine discussing with the patient. They can also incorporate the hospital staff communication device that can help to keep the entire team together for one single cause.
Conclusion
Hence these are the 3 effective solutions to the hospital communication and improve it to find innovative patient care solutions. It will enable them to work in a very collaborative and supportive environment when the hospital staff works toward effective communication.