Search Tag: Communication

2015 27 Jul

In his book The Future of Work , Jacob Morgan describes five types of organisational structures and concepts that "either already exist in today’s business landscape or are starting to emerge as viable options for the future of work." Key features that characterise each of these structures are summarised below. Traditional Hierarchy In this model,...Read more

2015 27 Jul

Athenahealth's new secure text messaging service "athenaText" makes coordination within care teams easier and faster — which contributes to improved patient care. Integrated with athenahealth’s cloud-based EHR platform, athenaText is available free to the more than one million healthcare professionals on the athenahealth network. The service is accessible...Read more

2015 27 Jul

According to an article published in USA Today, hospitals are turning toward patients and their family members for suggestions to improve quality of care.  A number of hospitals in the Nashville, Tennessee, area are trying to ensure their patients' voice is part of their planning efforts. For this purpose they have established LifePoint Health, a...Read more

2015 07 Jul

Technology, rising competition and consumer trends are only some of the many challenges that companies have to deal with in today's ever-changing business environment. In this kind of environment, the ability to adapt to change becomes imperative. Successful companies, as Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter has noted, develop “a culture...Read more

2015 06 Jul

A workshop developed at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) has been effective in improving palliative care communication skills of critical care nurses. Specifically, workshop participants reported improvements to skill and confidence levels for engaging in discussions of prognosis and goals of care with families and physicians, according...Read more

2015 09 Jun

A recent webinar hosted by Becker's Hospital Review discussed the importance of managing the physician referral process. Key benefits of having an enhanced referral process include cost savings and better patient experience. The session focused on improving two main models of referrals: many-to-one, which has a hospital or facility as a central cog,...Read more

2015 16 Apr

Trauma is a fast-paced, demanding environment, and communication is key to ensuring everyone understands their roles and responsibilities. As a new study suggests, doctors and other members of trauma resuscitation teams should map out mental blueprints — much like how athletes mentally visualise races long before lacing up — and then communicate their...Read more

2015 14 Apr

Emergency department (ED) patients have misperceptions about opioid dependence and want more information about their pain management options, according to researchers from Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Patients seen in the ED for acute pain, the researchers note, expressed a desire for better communication from physicians...Read more

2015 30 Mar

Physicians who send text messages to other clinicians using their own smartphones risk the privacy and security of the information they send. However, insisting that they adopt additional gadgets and tools to communicate with other clinicians can prevent a smooth workflow. A secure app that can be downloaded to doctors’ existing devices now provides...Read more

2015 18 Mar

There are two basic rules when it comes to dealing with and talking to relatives of patients in the ICU - Treat people the way you would like to be treated, and wherever possible treat people the way they wish to be treated. Stephen Warrillow (Melbourne, Australia) outlined ten rules for dealing with relatives, speaking at the International Symposium...Read more

2015 28 Jan

More than half of patients in intensive care units (ICU) using ventilators to help them breathe could benefit from assistive communication tools and speech language consultation, according to a new study published in Heart & Lung . These tools could be as simple as a notepad and pen that would allow a patient to write requests and questions, researchers...Read more

2015 05 Jan

Effective communication is vital in the intensive care unit (ICU). Communication in an ICU is usually thought to be most frequent between doctors and nurses. A study at the Loyola University Health System burn centre intensive care unit (ICU), however, showed that a dietitian, a social worker and three doctors a were the most central communicators of...Read more

2014 24 Nov

Anaesthesiologists play a vital role in perioperative care. In recent decades, the risks associated with anaesthetic care have been dramatically reduced. However, anaesthesia takes centre stage among acute healthcare services, and from a patient's perspective, anaesthesia-specific risks cannot be meaningfully isolated from perioperative and peri-interventional...Read more

2014 18 Nov

A special report on radiology preparedness for handling cases of the Ebola virus has been released by radiologists from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta (GA, USA). The authors discuss their protocols and recommendations in the report which is published online in Radiology . “Clear and frequent...Read more

2014 14 Oct

Telephone advice nursing, or ‘telenursing’ including telephone triage, is defined as the practice of providing ‘a component of telephone nursing practice that focuses on assessment, prioritisation, and referral to the appropriate levels of care’ and ‘identifying the nature and urgency’ of a caller's or patient's needs'. In Sweden, the service is called...Read more

2014 24 Sep

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2014 24 Sep

Authors Paul Barach , MD, MPH Guest Professor University of Oslo, Norway Gautham K. Suresh , MD, MS Associate Professor of Pediatrics a nd Community & Family Medicine Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, New Hampshire...Read more

2014 15 Sep

Gossip can both hinder and help in a hospital environment. Despite the fact that research indicates that it occurs frequently in healthcare organisations, it has not been studied in relation to other organisational manifestations such as burnout and engagement, or quality of care outcomes. A study recently published in the journal Burnout Research...Read more

2014 31 Aug

Guidelines to enhance communication during patient care transitions between healthcare settings have the potential to improve patient outcomes and satisfaction, as well as to decrease overall healthcare costs. During care transitions, patients’ clinicians, including hospital-based clinicians and community-based primary care providers (PCPs), are responsible...Read more

2014 08 Jul

The European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP) has responded to a consultation by the European Commission advising that any mHealth applications linked to the use of medicines must have levels of regulatory oversight, ideally involving pharmacist expertise, in order to ensure their safety.
 The European Commission launched a consultation...Read more

2014 03 Jun

A team of Canadian researchers investigating the use of a communication tool within an acute healthcare organisation reports that dialogues improved among staff and between staff, patients and their families. Communication was evaluated before and after implementation of the tool, with participants self-reporting their levels of satisfaction. Leadership...Read more

2014 17 Mar

According to a recent study funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative and published earlier this year on the website of the journal Critical Care Medicine, the implementation of a set of ICU practices aimed at encouraging patient’s mobility and decrease sedation can effectively reduce delirium...Read more

2014 11 Feb

Leading home dialysis company announces new patient outreach campaign aimed at increasing awareness of home hemodialysis among ESRD patients NxStage Medical Inc., a leading manufacturer of innovative dialysis products, has announced from the Annual Dialysis Conference (ADC) in Atlanta, Georgia the introduction of a new patient outreach campaign,...Read more

2014 30 Jan

Consolidating clinical communications, patient-centric workflow and a real-time clinical team directory, a secure smartphone application connects all members of a patient’s care team and enables better patient care at a lower cost. Mobile Heartbeat launches Mobile Heartbeat CURE (Clinical Urgent REsponse), a smartphone application enabling secure...Read more

2013 17 Oct

A recently published study from Sectra analyses the views of 78 referring physicians and 78 radiologists on the method of study ordering and result communication. With radiology being at the very centre of the healthcare chain it is evident that most patients will visit an imaging department at some point in their treatment. Subsequently, the ability...Read more

2013 06 Jun

Ambient background noise—whether it is the sound of loud surgical equipment, talkative team members, or music—is a patient and surgical safety factor that can affect auditory processing among surgeons and the members of their team in the operating room (OR), according to a new study that appears in the May issue of the Journal of the American College...Read more

2013 06 Mar

In a research letter published in JAMA Internal Medicine, Tanner J. Caverly, M.D., of the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, and colleagues report the findings of a survey of patients undergoing outpatient computed tomography (CT) at the Denver Veterans Affairs Medical Center.   271 patients completed the survey, which examined...Read more