Simulation-based training for emergency department staff
Patients who were admitted to the Xyz hospital had huge number of complaints about the nurses. They stated that neither the nurses communicated with them entirely nor they answered their queries properly. They were also not able to understand the different interventions that were taken for them and therefore their anxiety affected their health. Moreover, many of the individuals also complained of medication errors that affected their lives making their hospital stays longer. When nurses were asked about the issues, a blame game was observed that ultimately resulted in failure of the meetings. Power struggles were also observed among the nurses and hence none was comfortable with each other. All these had resulted in a tensed situation in the workplace that affected service delivery. Therefore, researchers and nurse managers were appointed to solve the issues and help in development of a smooth workplace.
After the major number of complaints from the patients regarding improper service delivery of the nursing professionals as well as that of the regular conflicts that used to take place on the floors, there was an urgent need to conduct a research. This research was needed to find out the root cause of the ineffective service delivery to patients so that the issue can be handed effectively and thereby provide high quality care to the patients. Moreover, the main reasons for blames games as well as conflicts between the nurses also need to be identified. After thorough research conducted by the healthcare researchers, it was found that ineffective communication had been the major reason for all the issues that had been taking place. The nurses were not aware of the importance of therapeutic communication with the patients. Their non-verbal communication skills like empathy, compassion, cultural competence, body language and other had been the main reason for the dissatisfaction of the patients. They became anxious as well as fearful of their fate, as the nurses did not communicate with them regarding interventions, informed consent, patient education and others. All these made them disappointed. Moreover, the relationship between the junior and senior nurses was also not close as power struggles had been observed between them. Moreover, the nurses suffered from complexes among them and therefore trust was completely absent among them. This showed that there is an immediate need for the establishment of a project.
The project that would be developed would have two main aims. The first one would be helping the nursing professionals to develop the knowledge and thereby successfully practice the concept of therapeutic communication with that of the patients. The second aim would be to help the professionals overcome the power struggles and thereby develop bond and trust among them.
Implementing a care coordination program for children with special healthcare needs
The project is significant, as it would help to develop a culture within the workplace that would help to maintain smooth working environment among the nurses. The nurses would be able to trust each other and develop a strong bond among them through effective communication skills. The nurses would be able to work as a team and this would have positive impact on the health of the patient. Besides, nurses would learn effective skills that are needed to ensure effective communication with the patients (Aslakan et al., 2012). They would be able to learn the different ways by which they should communicate with the patients that would ensure not only safe practice but would also ensure high quality patient satisfaction. The nurses would be able to understand the modification required in their skills and practice so that they can provide patients with satisfactory stay in the healthcare centres (Pazargadi et al., 2015).
The project would be established with the healthcare organisation only. One of the conference rooms would be turned into training room. Each of the department would have to send the number of nurses who work there to the project manager. Each of the department would have to send the nurses twice a week for the training sessions and accordingly, days would be provided to them. The training sessions would be such that on one day; they would be trained about the use of therapeutic nursing. The training session on the other day would be about the disadvantage of power struggle and that ways, it affects both patient life and their nursing career.
The seminars would be arranged in the community auditorium four times a month. Auditorium would be required as it would be able to accommodate huge number of nurses at the same time and therefore all nurses would get the scope of development of the project (Sweeney et al., 2014).
The policy preparation would be done in the conference rooms only where the higher authorities would be coming together and discussing their concerns. They should put forward their valuable suggestions where the policy that would be developed would help to develop proper organisational culture of effective communication.
Develop patient-provider communication:
A training session be arranged in the healthcare centre twice a week. Trainers would be appointed for the sessions who would be conducting training sessions of the nurses. They would be focussing on the topic of communication. They would help the nursing professionals to understand the important of therapeutic communication helping them to develop their communication skills (Taylor et al. 2013). The project would be also include arrangements of weekly seminars where experienced nurses would come as speakers and would discuss their experiences that they had throughout life influencing the professionals to understand its significance in their professions.
Effective communication and its importance in healthcare
Develop provider-provider communication:
The project would be arranging training sessions where both senior nurses and junior nurses would be attending together. These training sessions would be mainly focused on teaching the importance of trust and bond among the members of healthcare organisations to overcome power struggles and provide safe care service. Another important aspect to overcome power struggle and help nurses to communicate effectively irrespective of their positions are to develop a proper organisational culture (Weiner, 2012). Effective feedback meetings would be arranged where professionals would provide constructive feedback against each other so that a transparent environment can be maintained. The organisational culture would be such it would give the scope to the nurses to make them feel more empowered. The organisation should develop a shared governance model that would give the nurses their voice to raise their concerns and get solutions to it. The project would also develop policies where the organisation would clarify that they would be not entertaining any disruptive behaviour of the nurses and would not be tolerating any verbal abuse (Foronda et al., 2016).
Every project would only achieve completion after its result or response get evaluated. Then only it helps to understand whether the project would be considered successful or other important modifications are required for attaining success of the projects. In order to evaluate the result effectively, a committee needs to be set up. The committee would be developing questionnaires for the patient where the patients would be depicting their feelings on the communication skills of the nurses and how well they have been communicated in different aspects of their healthcare (Kourkouta & Pathaninasiou, 2014). Depending upon the response of the patients, researchers would be able to understand whether the nursing professionals are able to develop therapeutic communication with the patients. This would help to understand whether the training sessions conducted by the trainers are helping in meeting the objective of the project or not. Moreover, the trainers would be also conducting weekly discussion sessions where they would be providing marks to the nurses over the development if their communication skills. Such reports can act as excellent evidence of the development of nurses on the basis of their communication skills with their patients (Koivunen et al., 2015).
Two other set of questionnaires would be developed. The first set of questionnaire would help to develop an understanding of the feelings of the nurses on the power struggle, the bonds that they are gradually developing and the ways the training sessions had helped them to overcome the power struggle. The response would he helpful to understand whether the training sessions had been successful in modifying the thinking procedure of the nurses and helping them to break their shells and communicate effectively with each other. The feedback meetings would be observed by the committee members as that would help them to understand whether the nurses are being able to engage in transparent constructive feedback exchange skills. All these observations would be noted (Mody et al., 2015). The other questionnaire would be mainly depicting questions about the effect of the changes of the organisational culture. The nurses would be required to fill it and this would help the committee members to understand whether they nurses are benefitted and happy with the policy structure and that they have liked the new organisational culture or not.
Ineffective communication among nursing professionals and its consequences
The most important factor that had influenced the implementation of the project is the inability of the nurses to develop therapeutic communication with the patients. Moreover, the power struggle experienced by the different nurses at the different levels of the hierarchy had also made it important to develop a project that would help them to overcome the barrier and communicate effectively (Weller et al., 2014). The need of the organisation to reduce the number of complaints and to increase the reputation and good will of the healthcare system, it became extremely important for the organisation to implement this project. The organisation was losing the trust of the service users as they were not getting high quality care service that they were expecting. Such word of mouth publicity would have resulted them to lose other potential service users of the future as well. Therefore, to ensure effective profit and business and at the same time, such projects often become necessary not only to ensure best care quality to patients but also to maintain brand reputation and ensure best profitability (Lavin, Harper & Barr, 2015)
This project is expected to bring out some of the best implications on nursing practise. The nurses would be able to establish therapeutic relationship with the patients through effective communication skills. The nurses would be empathetic and compassionate while communicating with the patients and this would make the patients feel that the professionals have genuine concerns for them. Effective communication skills of professionals also ensure patients to develop trust on them for which they tend to adhere with the interventions suggested by the nurses (Moir et al., 2015) . Nurses are also able to solve the queries and concerns of the patients through effective communication and help to develop their health literacy. This reduces anxiety and fear of the patients that have positive impacts on their health. Nurses with effective communication skills also develop the capability to get informed consent of the patients easily and can thereby maintain autonomy and dignity of the patients. (Al-abri et al., 2014) Overcoming of power struggle and transparent constructive communication between the junior and senior nurses help nurses to overcome any confusion they face while providing medication, get help in busy shifts, share work burden many others. These in turn help to ensure high quality care that are free from any medication errors and ensure patient satisfaction.
This project is solely based on the development of communication skills among the nurses so that they can provide high quality care service to the patients. Depending upon the result of the project, future projects would be established. One of the most important parts of communication is cultural competence. With the nation being the residence of different cultures in the present generation, there is high chance that every professional would have to handle patients from diverse backgrounds (Broqn, 2018). Therefore, the future projects would mainly be established to develop knowledge about culturally competent communication in the patients so that the dignity and autonomy of culturally diverse patients are respected.
Steps to improve communication among nursing professionals
Conclusion
From the entire discussion, it was seen the patients had to go through numerous suffering due to improper communication skills of the nurses with them and with their colleagues. They result in developing depression, anxiety, dear and disappointment among the patients for which they have poor health outcomes. Medication error, late response of nurses, larger waiting times and others also take place. Therefore, in order to develop proper communication skill, projects would be established that would help the nurses to develop communication skills and communicate effectively with patients. Overcoming of power struggles and initiations of an organisational culture that influences effective communication among the members would also result in positive influences. Therefore, recommendations would mainly comprise of establishment of training sessions, effective feedback meetings, seminars of nursing stalwarts, effective policy development for modification of organisational culture and many others. Theses would help to develop a culture where effective communication would be influenced and better patent care can be ensured.
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