Small Bursts of Frequent Communications—an Effective Communication Method in a Busy Emergency Department

Excerpt

Communication skills for a caregiver, medical as well as nursing, are of utmost importance in providing quality emergency care. The Institute of Medicine in 2001 described “patient centered care” as one of the pillars of quality in healthcare. Effective communication between the patient and provider is integral to patient centered care [1]. Patient and family satisfaction are directly related to the quality of timely and effective communication between clinician and patient’s family [2‐9]. The most common reasons for litigations and complaints in any leading medical center are related to poor communication and inappropriate conduct of healthcare givers rather than perceived sub-optimal treatment. There is no doubt that government medical facilities are often overwhelmed at all levels of care. The situation is further compounded by the lack of formal competence-based training in human factors. A multitude of reasons such as high volume of critically sick patients, perpetual shortage of trained staff, lack of availability of senior personnel especially at odd hours and inadequate facilities at primary and secondary levels make most emergency departments a challenging area to provide adequate communication consistently. …