Communication in heath contexts Flashcards
What is the traditional model of communication?
- Shannon and Weaver (1948)
- Source –> transmitter –> channel –> receiver –> destination
What are the three stages of communication?
Thought, encoding, decoding
- Thought: A concept, idea, information, or feelings
- Encoding: A message sent to a receiver (e.g. words)
- Decoding: The receiver translates the words into a concept or information that he or she can understand
What are the common problems with traditional models of communication?
- Oversimplified
- Separation of roles
- Direction (bidirectional exchange, not one directional – involves the speaker and receiver)
- Model doesn’t allow the role of feedback
- Doesn’t allow for the importance of content or meaning
- Context
- Relationship (speaker and listener – lecturer & student, doctor & student) (can have an issue with authority
What aspects of communication are just as important as the words used?
- The tone of our voice when we speak
- The attention we give to what the other person is saying
- The messages we give out by the way we move and position our bodies
- The accuracy and clarity of what we write are also key elements of good communication
- Multiple communication aspects: listening and attending (including patient/family complaints), non – verbal, verbal, questioning, written
- Questions and presentation of information (leaflets etc.)
What are the different types of communication?
Verbal and non-verbal
What is verbal communication?
Language
Paralinguistic
What is non-verbal communication?
o Haptics (e.g. therapeutic touch) o Gestures o Facial expressions o Eye-contact o Appearance
What is communication in healthcare?
- A health professional may conduct as many as 150,000 patient interviews in an entire career
- During a 4-day stay in hospital a patient may interact with 50 employees in the health care system
- Lack of communication creates situations where medical errors can occur
Why is health professional-patient communication of importance?
- Creating a good therapeutic relationship
o Would like to have a good relationship with someone taking control of your care - Exchanging information
- Making healthcare-related decisions
- Most patient dissatisfaction and complaints are due to breakdown in the relationship
How has empathy been linked to health outcomes?
- Patients who gave their clinician a perfect empathy score reported that their colds were less severe, were of shorter duration and they also had improved biomarkers of cold (Rakel et al, 2011)
- Physician empathy was positively associated with improvement in patient-reported outcomes of depression and quality of life (Neumann et al, 2007)
o Suggests that psychology has a huge role in care and communication with patients
How has communication been linked to healthcare complaints?
Almost 1/5th of complaints by the public about doctors to the Medical council relate to poor communication
Why is good communication important?
- GMC report (2012)
- 23% increase in complaints regarding doctors (focusing primarily on how doctors interact with their patients)
- 69% increase in complaints about communication
- 45% rise in complaints regarding lack of respect
Case study of the consequences of poor communication –>
University of Missouri School of Medicine (2010)
o Continually voted as one of the bottom hospitals in the US in patient satisfaction
- Their medical center was consistently in the lowest quarter of hospitals in the country in patient-satisfaction scores
- Mixed messages:
o 18-45% of patients unable to recall major risks of treatment
o 44% of patient didn’t know the nature of their operation
o 60-68% of patients didn’t read or understand the consent form
o 80% of information told by doctor forgotten as soon as patient leaves consultation
o 50% of what is recalled by patients is incorrect
- As a result… Communication training
o The Missouri medical school now uses an online course that includes 17 videos illustrating different communication issues
o Physicians practice with actors specific to their medical specialties.
o Scenarios:
A routine interaction in a clinic or hospital
Delivering bad news
Delivering a life-changing diagnosis
Checking a patient’s understanding of a plan of care
What is the current drive in health psychology regarding communication?
Current drive in health psychology to implement communication training programs across healthcare professionals
What is being increasingly seen in the modern age and healthcare?
Changes in patient;
o Morbidity
Increasingly seeing an ageing population and chronic pain issues/management
o Availability of information
Internet, googling symptoms etc.
o Power balance (expert-patient)
Patient can become more of an expert in their condition that the professional treating them