Communication Tools
Good Communication and Active Listening are vital for Safe Patient Care
Good communication and active listening are essential skill for everyone on a team. They show respect and strengthen performances and safety, stops inefficiencies, and confirm calmness amid a crisis.
Bad communication "It says to worry but won't tell you why. It implies action, but it doesn't tell you which. It ignores timing (now, or later, or whenever) but it doesn't tell you actually need." *1 It signals problems in sometimes loud or inaudible voices, uses language that can be confusing or disrespectful, and conveys imprecise, incomplete, and even incorrect, information. Sometimes it is silence to avoid a conflict, but this ultimately expands the conflict. Bad communications weaken systems and sabotages safety. *1 Unconditional Love, The High Side of Life, Keith Turnbull
Introduces elements of good communication and the lack thereof
CommunicationTools:
These include a One Standard video to introduce the importance of good communications during both calm and crisis situations. It is lighthearted but many will identify with the scenarios presented. One of the goals of this video is to stimulate group conversations, not constrained by department boundaries, that identify current communication gaps, the problems they cause, their root causes, solutions, and how to correct the deficits. Sites with the personal educated and/or experienced in this subject can seamlessly move forward and other sites will still move forward, because they are unified with a clear goal.
Other tools include communication forms like sample hand off reports. On this website there are simple, clear forms that can be copied and used by a site, but this is not the intended goal. I was unable to place access to the digital copy of the forms here. With the digital form of these tools a site can modify them to suit their current needs and update them periodically. Please email a request for these and I will send these to you.
Samples of Communication Forms
Patient Handoff Reports
At stop points, as shown in the graphic below, a patient is transferred from the care of one provider to another. The transfer includes a verbal patient handoff report. When the structure of this communication is standardized throughout the hospital to a format like ISBAR, the report is concise and allows the receiving provider to continue care uninterrupted. While the image is of an ISBAR checklist, it is the organization of the communication that we are illustrating here. As the report is given from one provider to another, the order of the topics communicated is exactly as it is on this checklist. Following this order of topics makes communications simple and concise. The receiving provider knows this order and quickly identifies and asks about missing topics. Standardizing these reports decreases errors and omissions.
Patient hand off reports should be given at all stop points in care
Incorporation and Reinforcement of Universal Protocols
