Question

This question is regarding Flawed Evidence Based Communications

Share a personal experience or something you heard or read about (such as in the media, please cite if you use this), where communicating evidence was flawed that caused harm or danger. Your response could include no communication of the evidence led to harm or danger.

Please write 200 words.

Answer 1

Effective and efficient communication is crucial in medical care. Ineffective communication among medical professionals is one of the leading causes of medical error and patient harm. According to the National Council of State Boards of Nursing reports, nurses cited communication issues with physicians as one of the too most highly contributing factors to the patient care errors In the acute care setting, communication failure leads to increases the patient harm and length of hospital stay. In intensive care units , poor collaborative communication among nurses and physicians, among other specific factors increases the patient risk - adjusted mortality and length of hospital stay.

From my personal experience in intensive care unit, it was evidenced that poor physician communications leads to medical error. During my night shift, without informing me the junior physician ordered an antibiotic in the drug chart, which was already stopped by the chief physician due to the patient was not responding to the particular antibiotic. When I opened the drug file and noticed the changes made by the junior physician . I was confused and made a call to him and informed all the details about drug . But he intimidated me to carry out the order what he ordered . I felt trapped and that situation forced me to call the chief physician in the late night but he was concerned about the patient and he strictly informed that did not follow the order of junior physician. My right act upon the situation saved a medical error. Here poor communication among junior physician with me(nurse) and chief physician was the problem of medical negligence.