Health Care Communication


The accepted standard definition of health care communication is the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand the basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions. The health care communication is also considered as the health care literacy which appears in different variety of ways. The health care communication can be in conversations with healthcare professionals, on prescription and over-the-counter medications bottles, health education or promotional materials, insurance or Medicare applications and other forms of health information.


Health communications examines the relationship of communication to desired patient care outcomes. The importance of the communication providers and selected outcomes like the adherence to treatment, healthcare utilization, trust, and satisfaction with healthcare providers, and improvements in health status are part of the communication practice ( 2009). The training of communication providers adheres to the professional values. The stated values are the foundation of the practice which is equally important to ensure the patient’s safety and high quality of care.


Effective Personal Healthcare


Personal interactions between providers and patients create impact on patient satisfaction, patient self-care, and health outcomes. Therefore, verbal communication during a provider-patient encounter is extremely important, particularly for low health literate patients who may lack the resources and skills necessary to obtain needed information on their own (2004).


Effective personal health care or self-management is the extent to which the patients manage disease and illness effectively to elicit healing and promote health ( 2009). The individuals must undertake to line well with one or more chronic conditions. This includes the confidence in dealing with medical management, role management, and emotional management.


The self-management support is defined as a systematic provision of education and supportive interventions by healthcare staff to increase patients’ skills and confidence in managing their health problems, including regular assessment of progress and problems. The importance of effective self-management as a component of quality health care is quite clear and the chief question is about the understanding the appropriate support and information to maximize the patient’s ability to live (2009).


Effective Professional Healthcare


An effective communication and collaboration with the health professionals can provide a patient-centered care. Through the interactive activities, the health professional and practitioners can foster collaboration to improve communication in health care. The collaboration is based on the complementarities of the roles of each professional and how they handle the patients according to a case-to-case basis (2008). The interaction with communication skills will improve practice in yielding better patient outcomes. An essential component for the establishing this communication discipline is defining the goals that can help in processing the patient’s own decision.


Patient-centered communication can be a part of an organization’s quality initiatives. But the investment in improving communication must be balanced against the other needs, including the communication with other people. Establishing performance goals and allocating of financial and human resources to develop an effective communication is a thrust in building better outcomes (2006).


Lack of Effectiveness to Poor Health Outcomes


Any lack of communication in either personal or professional healthcare communication can result to poor health outcome. The worst is making the patient to give up his or her fight against the disease.


The professional healthcare providers experience the lack of communication in a deaf patient, and could possibly lead to misdiagnoses or problems in treatment. One way to communicate is through the use of a sign language interpreter. It is the best way to communicate if the healthcare provider met a deaf patient (). 


Communication with the patient might result in an agreement to utilize a different auxiliary aid or service rather than a sign language interpreter is in the free will of the patient as long as they can meet the effective communication provided by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).


The responsibility of a healthcare provider is to carefully consider in establishing a patient’s request for a sign language interpreter or other helpful tools for other patient’s with disabilities to ensure effective communication with the patient.  Developing rapport and establishing the trust are the essential parts of healthcare communications. The medical practice can be best delivered if there is a good relationship between the patient and the healthcare provider.


Theories and Principles


In delivering an effective healthcare communication, the human resources are obliged to develop an information collection to use as a system in providing the applicable that can specify the different patients’ and their needs. A well-trained workforce can build a strong foundation of trust between their relationships to the patients. Also, the leaders can develop budgets and strategic plans that incorporate the financial and human resources required to establish new systems or improve systems already in use (2006).


The applied model for healthcare communication is within the process approach, semiotic analysis and cultural studies. The study of health communication is based in models of behavior of the patient who reacts in the diseases. Health communications involve s the persuading a person or people to take a recommended course of action (2007).


 



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