Dissecting Communication Barriers in Healthcare: A Path to Enhancing Communication Resiliency, Reliability, and Patient Safety

Abstract

Suboptimal exchange of information can have tragic consequences to patient's safety and survival. To this end, the Joint Commission lists communication error among the most common attributable causes of sentinel events. The risk management literature further supports this finding, ascribing communication error as a major factor (70%) in adverse events. Despite numerous strategies to improve patient safety, which are rooted in other high reliability industries (e.g., commercial aviation and naval aviation), communication remains an adaptive challenge that has proven difficult to overcome in the sociotechnical landscape that defines healthcare. Attributing a breakdown in information exchange to simply a generic "communication error" without further specification is ineffective and a gross oversimplification of a complex phenomenon. Further dissection of the communication error using root cause analysis, a failure modes and effects analysis, or through an event reporting system is needed. Generalizing rather than categorizing is an oversimplification that clouds clear pattern recognition and thereby prevents focused interventions to improve process reliability. We propose that being more precise when describing communication error is a valid mechanism to learn from these errors. We assert that by deconstructing communication in healthcare into its elemental parts, a more effective organizational learning strategy emerges to enable more focused patient safety improvement efforts. After defining the barriers to effective communication, we then map evidence-based recovery strategies and tools specific to each barrier as a tactic to enhance the reliability and validity of information exchange within healthcare.

Communication barriers to education to referrals from the perspective of referrals to health centers and health care providers

“…Environmental noise, further defined as equipment- and staff-related noise, usually refers to any extraneous sounds within the operational environment, such as conversation, tools, alarms, and ambient sounds from machinery. 27 Perhaps one of the reasons why environmental barriers are higher than other barriers is that the present study was conducted during the Covid 19 epidemic, so at this time, environmental factors such as masks, shields, and personal protective equipment all affected the line of vision and reduced the nonverbal components of communication. Because viewing the speaker’s face is very effective in recognizing speech intelligibility.…”

Communication barriers to education to referrals from the perspective of referrals to health centers and health care providers attendants in Kerman

“…One prevalent barrier to communication is environmental noise. Environmental noise, further de ned as equipment-and staff-related noise, usually refers to any extraneous sounds within the operational environment, such as conversation, tools, alarms, and ambient sounds from machinery (25).…”

Condições De Trabalho Da Equipe De Enfermagem Do Centro Cirúrgico E Sua Influência No Parto Cesáreo

“…Esta meta se justifi ca, uma vez que a literatura de gerenciamento de risco atribuiu o erro de comunicação como um fator importante (70%) nos eventos adversos. (GUTTMAN, 2021). Logo, estratégias que promovam a melhoria do processo de comunicação devem ser amplamente estimuladas nos serviços de saúde.…”