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National Institute for Patient Rights |
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Protecting and Promoting Patient Rights |
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What we have here is a failure to communicate! |
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Does this sound familiar to you? You or a loved one are admitted to the hospital. Suddenly, your healthcare “team” blossoms into four or five, and even more, doctors (specialists). They don’t communicate with each other or the nurses and, as a result, the “team” doesn't communicate with you. You are then left struggling on your own to integrate patient care by piecing together bits of information in an attempt to get a more or less complete picture of the progress of the whole patient! This is very difficult to do in a hospital setting and extremely frustrating. It is also a gross violation of THE MOST fundamental right of all your patient/advocate rights: the right to informed consent. Welcome to the world of “component management” in modern medicine. It is a strange and chaotic world, where every organ has its own special doctor. There are even subspecialists for parts of organs. If something happens to one organ, you see a specialist for that organ; if something happens to another organ, you see a specialist and subspecialist for that organ, and so on. This leads to fragmentation or a lack of coordination in the delivery of health care, which lacks continuity for both the patient and for the patient’s family. Of course, a lack of coordination among specialists leads inevitably to miscommunication, or a failure to communicate. Miscommunication is THE cause of medical error. In a recent study, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) reported that up to 98,000 people died in one year alone due to medical error, making doctors the 7th leading cause of death in the US, ahead of motor vehicle accidents! The report attributes the high level of fatal mistakes directly to miscommunication or a failure to communicate. It doesn’t have to be this way! At the National Institute for Patient Rights, we have developed a strategy to solve the problem of a failure to communicate among specialists and between the “team” and patients/families. This plan will get you the ‘complete picture,’ help you coordinate care, and save you time and money by establishing open lives of communication with your healthcare team. Let’s begin together at the hospital bedside! Through this plan, step-by-step, you can build an in-hospital network of relationships with important hospital personnel who will get you the care you deserve when you need it. Ever develop a network of relationships? Sure you have— we all have. Nothing gets done without a network of relationships, whether it’s in business or in the home. We rely on networks for everything. The same is the case in the hospital. Where to begin? How about with the hospital chaplain for example? In fact, you should anchor your network with a chaplain. Have reservations about speaking with clergy? Think of it in this way, chaplains spend about 25% of their time ministering to spiritual values at the end of life. They spend the majority of their time putting out fires. . . clearing up problems of communication. . . mediating and resolving conflicts. . . helping patients and their families deal with medical error. Communication is their specialty! Try to distinguish their role as clergy from their function in the hospital. They are a virtual treasure trove of information and contacts. They know everyone, and everyone knows and loves them. Befriend a chaplain and you befriend medical staff. So, begin to build your network of relationships from the hospital bedside with a person who is a hub of relationships in the hospital among hospital staff. Chaplains will help you remedy the problems of communication associated with component management. If you would like to post a story on this page about dealing with the problem of miscommunication in the delivery of your health care, or offer advice to other readers on how to solve the problem, please feel free to email the post to us at empowerpatients@gmail.com. Check back for updates on tips for dealing with miscommunication in the delivery of health care at the hospital bedside.
For more information about this and other problems in the delivery of health care and how to solve them at the hospital bedside, please order the new NIPR guidebook, 3 Secrets Hospitals Don’t Want You To Know: How to Empower Patients.
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