Advantages & Disadvantages of Effective Medical Environment Communication

Effective communication within the medical environment is essential in providing efficient medical care to patients. Effective communication may impact the behavior of your patients, your conduct as the physician or medical attendant, the outcome of the medical care as well as your satisfaction and that of your patients.

Patient Safety

• Misdiagnosis may result from inability of the patient to communicate effectively in a language you can understand as the physician. Therefore, effective communication in the medical environment is helpful in eliminating the chances of misdiagnosing your patient or giving your patient inappropriate treatment. It enables you to reduce making errors, assumptions and misinterpretations when communicating with patients and when giving them treatments. This may include patients with limited English proficiency (LEP), especially foreigners or those who are deaf or have some difficulty hearing. The Joint Commission 2010 estimates 66 percent of patient deaths are due to miscommunication.

Effective Clinician-Patient Interaction

• Good communication between the patient and the physician promote interpersonal communications and social interactions in the hospital. Statistics from the American Academy on Communication in Healthcare (AACH) as of 2011 indicate that communication and relationship are essential in promoting clinician-patient interactions as well as interactions among the clinical team members. According to the statistics, about 70 percent of medical malpractice cases are due to relationship and communication issues between clinician and patient.

Professional Effectiveness in Clinical Work

• Effective and comprehensive communication is essential for coordination of healthcare services especially when providing healthcare to patients whose cases demand that you work together as a team with other medical specialists. In such a scenario, communication will be the first step in establishing consultation with other physicians. Thus, effectiveness of communication within the team will depend on how you successfully communicate with other medical specialists during the consultation process.

Departmental Isolation

• If a certain department in the hospital works primarily with another department so that most of the communication that flows between these two departments is not passed to other departments, other departments become virtually isolated. This may affect interdepartmental communications, especially during consultations, and in turn affect overall hospital management as well as the quality of health care provided.

Malicious Rumors

• When a hospital resorts to informal communication channels such as grapevine communication (where information is passed randomly using unrecognized channels within the organization), danger can result from the fact that the information spread may be dismissed as rumors or mere gossip because it cannot often be verified. When gossip is spread throughout the hospital environment, the physician's career as well as the patient's reputation and life can be destroyed. For instance, a rumor about an outbreak of a contagious disease in the hospital environment may make some physicians or nurses reluctant to attend to certain patients. The physicians may later be charged in court for neglect of duty if the patient dies.