IMPACT OF COMMUNICATION ON HEALTHCARE

Ms. V. Vidhya, Assistant Professor, Department of MBA ,Sankara College of Science and Commerce

Healthcare Research has shown no matter however knowledge does the Clinician or Healthcare provider have, if he / she does not communicate in the right manner to the public it may not help them!

INTRODUCTION

As rightly said the Communication is one of the main components in the healthcare delivery. For e.g., if a Clinic diagnoses a patient and want him / her to take the treatment it is his duty to rightly communicate the problem with the patient and convince him/her for the right treatment. Research studies have shown a strong relationship between the communication of healthcare providers and patients’ capacity to recover, self-manage the chronic conditions and to change their health behaviours. Communication in general terms means passing information and making them  aware of what you want to communicate. It is not just passing information, the information what we need to communicate should be in an understandable way. This article explains how the communication of healthcare providers takes a major role in wellness of the patients.

IMPACT OF COMMUNICATION

Let’s trace the patient communication with the hospital. If the he / she is the outpatient he /she encounter various outlets in the hospital like, Reception, Registration, specific department Outpatient registration, Investigation registration and billing, Clinicians, Nursing assistant, Junior doctors, Pharmacy reception and billing.  Here in this list it is mandatory that if one communication becomes disturbed the patient gets annoyed and his trust towards the hospital will become negative. If we take In-patients the communication towards the healthcare providers will be much higher than the outpatient. In this instance it becomes necessary that communication for the patient should be provided in a proper manner. As we can see if the hospital systems do not work properly the patients have to lose their way and will run from pillar to post. One side it is necessary that Doctors, nurses, and other clinical personnel’s communication towards the patient should be in right way but on the other hand communication among other healthcare teams also plays an important role. For e.g. If a pharmacist do not communicate properly about dispensing medicines to the patients in proper way the patients cannot understand and it is possible that they might miss a dose and can create health problems to them.

The Medical council of India has introduced a module in the curriculum with AETCOM (Attitude, Ethics and Communication Module) for the healthcare professionals. This module helps to prepare medical graduates for the role of clinician, communicator, lifelong learner and professional.

A study on Healthcare communication has established the following impacts on patients and Healthcare community,

1. Effective Communication with the patients while taking diagnosis history by the Clinicians will provide them diagnostic accuracy, which in turn helps them to provide proper treatment.
2. Not all the patients will adhere to the Clinicians advices. It’s the way how we communicate them to adhere the advices given to them to lead a healthy life.
3. Patient satisfaction will get improved if the Healthcare community understand their problems and communicate them in proper manner.
4. It is been studied that inefficient communication among Healthcare community has led to number of medical errors. Proper communication within the healthcare team will solve the problems due to medical errors which in turn implies the patient safety.
5. Communication within the healthcare team influences the quality of work, Job satisfaction, decrease the employee turnover and in turn increases the employee satisfaction level.
6. Malpractice claims are root cause for the improper communication of Clinicians with the patients. Study reports on malpractices claims conclude that the problem has occurred due to improper communication between clinicians and the patients.

Conclusion

Research evidence shows that proper communication between healthcare team members and patients will increase the positive relationships, patients’ expectations over the hospital or healthcare provider, job satisfaction of the working healthcare team and self-manage of chronic medical condition of patients. The magic with the Doctors treatment lies on the number of conversations with the patients. This implies the basic concept to communication which is to listen first than to react. So, we can equalise better communication with better outcome.