Clinician's Effective Communication In Health Care

Effective, integrated, and coordinated communication is integral to building a healthier and better work place. Research indicates that there are strong positive relationships between a healthcare team member’s communication skills and a patient’s capacity to follow medical recommendations, self-manage a chronic medical condition, and adopt preventive health behaviors. Clinician’s effective communication can have a profound effect on health outcomes and patient satisfaction. Furthermore, communication among healthcare team members influences the quality of working relationships, job satisfaction, and has a profound impact on patient safety. Experts in health communication found that collaboratively designed, implemented, and evaluated health

This communication should be appropriately tailored to the receiving party. It should emphasize awareness, relevance, solutions, capacity, and cost-benefit analysis. Furthermore, it should address barriers and encourage action especially in emergencies.

Credible

Edward R. Murrow said, “To be persuasive, we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful.” The business reputation is a key factor for whether staff and clients will trust the business enough to act on the information communicated by it. Clinic staff must use every opportunity to reinforce credibility and nurture trustworthiness among themselves and their clients. This can be accomplished by ensuring technical accuracy, transparency, and ceaseless coordination among staff as they display unity and reinforce the values of the business.

In order to achieve this goal communication needs to be concise using the simplest language possible that gets the point across completely and in a manner that encourages appropriate corresponding action. Simplicity is more memorable. Communication should also be complete so sender gets all of the information to the recipient the first time. This avoids wasting time and resources correcting problems that may arise from leaving out important information from the initial communication. In any business it pays to get the point across quickly. More importantly, the communication should be directed to the appropriate receiver using the shortest route possible. In a clinic setting this becomes important as triage personnel attempts to relay messages between patients and clinical and administrative staff. In such situation, staff communication efficiency can be further improved by algorithmic decision making charts and electronic health records (EHRs) (Jirjis et al., 2005). Efficient communication in clinic not only helps save the expensive time of a physician, it also leads to increased productivity and patient satisfaction.

Equitable

The basic building block of good communications is the feeling that every human being is unique and of value. Healthcare communication should not vary in quality because of