CHAPTER ONE

Experiencing Communication Problems:
Learning Can Optimize the Process

Experiencing Communication Problems: Learning Can Optimize the Process

Communication is an essential skill for every health professional to fulfill the many complex duties of their work. Understanding, reflecting, and analyzing communication are vital processes to optimize it. Communication is when people send and receive precise and exact information that shapes and reforms behaviors, attitudes, and cognitions (Gephart& Cholette, 2012; Guttman et al., 2021). From our earliest moments, humans have relied on communication to navigate the world and accomplish essential tasks. To accomplish the best patient outcomes, the healthcare team must work cohesively as a unit (Carney et al., 2019; de Assis Brito et al., 2022; Nester, 2016; Pack et al., 2022; Ross et al., 2015; Royse et al., 2020). Correct, precise communication among team members is vital to achieving success (de Assis Brito et al., 2022; Gutmann et al., 2021). Communication is crucial throughout people’s lives, especially when working as part of healthcare teams to ensure optimal patient outcomes.

The Consequences of Ineffective Communication

Ineffective communication costs hospitals an average of $2.2 million annually (Agarwal et al., 2010). When ineffective communication results in medication-related adverse events (MR AE), the costs vary significantly, depending on the area or country (Laatikainen et al., 2022). The estimated costs of medication-related adverse events in the United States varied significantly from $76.6 billion to $177.4 billion in research findings performed by investigators (Bates et al., 1997; Ernst& Grizzle, 2001; Johnson& Bootman, 1995).

From 2004 to 2006, Danish risk management research found that communication errors were reported as a significant factor in 70 percent of adverse events in health (Guttman et al., 2021; Rabøl, et al., 2011). Inadequate staff-to-staff communication and communication breakdowns continue to be the leading factors causing sentinel events in the United States ( Joint Commission, 2023). A sentinel event is an incident that affects the patient’s safety and is unrelated to the patient’s illness, which causes harm (Joint Commission, 2023).

Communication mistakes need to be prevented to optimize our work and to increase productivity. Communication problems can affect the processes and the results of healthcare professionals’ interventions, which directly affects patients (Guttman et al., 2021). Finding solutions to communication issues will improve documentation, ensure patient beneficence, reduce accreditation findings, avoid cost increases, and prevent costly remedial actions.

Structure of the Book

I (the author) wrote this book to immerse interprofessional health clinicians, professors, students, and everyone who feels the need to understand and improve their communication processes in an active and productive learning journey. Communication and teamwork are parts of health professionals’ everyday lives. Effective communication will increase the odds of obtaining the best possible outcomes for every individual involved in the processes, especially the patients and their caregivers. This textbook will help the reader understand the many variables that can affect communication and how to improve the communication processes.

This textbook will provide effective tools to understand and solve healthcare communication problems. I encourage readers to consider their own communication experiences and to engage in an active learning process of reflection and analysis to improve team communication. This book will address different topics about communication, describing and analyzing real healthcare professionals' experiences obtained during interviews with nurses, physical therapists, physical therapist assistants, occupational therapists, occupational therapist assistants, speech language pathologists, nutritionists, social workers, and health administration personnel. In addition, this book will narrate my own personal experiences.

The topics covered in the chapters are: 1) The effects of ineffective communication and how health professionals need to work as part of effective teams; 2) Communication processes and styles, what affects communication, how to prevent communication mistakes, and how to optimize communication; 3) Communication barriers, its causes, and practical solutions; 4) Speak up, voice, and silence behaviors and communication tools to promote the speak up behavior; 5) Psychological safety and how to build trust in health professionals to increase their speak up behavior; 6) Po