Strategies for enhancing communication among healthcare professionals

Abstract

Communication plays an important role in all fields, especially in healthcare settings, when it is related to patients’ health conditions and healthcare procedures. Some situations may demand accurate and effective communication. Communication in healthcare settings can be divided into two elements, such as the communication of healthcare providers and patients and the communication among healthcare providers, for instance doctors, nurses, practical nurses, physicians, pharmacists etc. Miscommunication between healthcare professionals can lead to bad quality of care, misdiagnosis, misidentification and eventually adverse or life-threatening event. This thesis emphasizes communication between healthcare professionals especially who work in different organizations.

The purpose of the thesis is to explore methods how to improve effectiveness of communication among healthcare professionals. The goal of the thesis is to highlight the importance of effective communication for the improvement of care and aim to provide information about communication methods used for effective collaboration communication.

This thesis was carried out using literature review method and the databases used are Science Direct (Elsevier), CINAHL, PubMed, and Sage. Some Finnish studies were also included in selected sources.

The main findings of the literature review show that communication among healthcare professionals can be developed through different approaches and techniques. In clinical handover, ISBAR is one of the effective techniques to provide quality care and patient safety as well as to limit the error of information transfer between healthcare providers. Using communication tools facilitate communication to be more convenient and effective, such as protocols, checklists, communication technology. One of the findings shows that interprofessional collaboration between different organizations can create better communication flow. Effective interprofessional communication is an essential tool to ensure that healthcare professionals across health disciplines work together with good collaboration.