Communication and Patient Safety Design - Research Paper Example

College Communication and Patient Safety Research Design Effective communication has been one of the major challenges that most caregivers have with their patients. Most nurses do not realize the role that effective communication plays in reducing risk factors of the patient. This paper is a critical design of a research that is to be performed to prove that there is indeed a correlation between poor communication and patient’s risk. The paper first analyzes the previous paper on the same topic and then looks at how samples can be taken without any discrimination. Thereafter, the paper discusses various ways to collect and analyze data before coming up with a strong conclusion based on the research findings and results. The conclusion of this paper is very important to nurses and caregivers as they realize the importance of effective communication in the healthcare facility. Introduction Effective communication is vital to the safety of every patient and every nurse is aware of that. For a patient to have a positive outcome, nurses are expected to understand their problems and to effectively communicate with them, noting critical areas that mostly affect the patient. With communication, the nurse is able to identify problems and come up with various ways to solve the problems that the patient might have. It is, however, a common scenario to find that nurses do not provide effective communication to patients and, as a result, cause complications. Most nurses believe that there is no mathematical proof to evidence that effective communication is vital to positive patient safety and as a result, end up ignoring this very important concept of communication. This paper critically analyzes a sample population of patients to come up with a statistical proof that effective communication is vital to a positive safety outcome from the patient. Is there a mathematical proof that effective communication is vital to patient’s safety? With a statistical proof that there is a correlation between effective patient communication and their safety, most nurses, who are the main care givers, would have a reason to believe in effective communication and help convince patients to improve their communication skills (Turkoski 231). Literature Review For many years, professional nurses have tried to link effective communication to positive patient feedback. Many articles written on this topic bring out varying importance of effective communication to the positive outcome of the patient. One article by Frankel identified that for a patient to show positive results, it was necessary for all parties to have an effective communication with each other. Nurses and caregivers have to understand the patients by involving them in various clinical procedures. Factors that influence communication were also identified. The key factor that was identified was the system that the entire hospital used. Some hospitals and healthcare facilities have large and complicated systems that make it hard for patients to effectively communicate with healthcare providers. The larger and more complex the system of the hospital, the harder it is for the patients to effectively communicate with the healthcare providers. Due to this factor, it is necessary for healthcare facilities to ensure that their systems are simple to understand and that the hospital or healthcare facility is organized into departments that allow effective communication between the patient and the caregiver. Another factor that influenced communication between the patient and their caregiver is the nature of the patient. There are patients who are hard to understand. They are complicated and in most cases would not communicate effectively with the caregiver. This is one of the major communication challenges that a caregiver might face. When faced with any hostile patient who is not willing to provide any useful information that may help in their case, it is common for errors to occur. Thus, nurses should ensure that they fully understand their patients and identify effective ways in which they can get information from them. DerGurahian in his book Modern Healthcare maintains that errors mostly occur due to poor communication (123). When a caregiver and their patient do not communicate effectively, there are chances that one of the two parties might give or gather information that is not right. This information can pose some risks to the patient’s safety. With effective communication, error is reduced and so the overall risks that may face the customer are mitigated. Turkoski in his article maintains that poor communication is a major contributor of errors that are made in medication. He states that when nurses fail to effectively communicate with the patient, there is a higher risk of getting errors that may transmit to errors in medication. He, therefore, suggests that in order for the entire medical practitioners to ensure that errors in medication are reduced, they have to ensure that there is effective communication between them and the patients. From the previous paper, it is clear that poor communication is his major cause of errors in healthcare facilities. It is, therefore, important that healthcare practitioners be ready to deal with poor communication and ensure that they are friendly to the patients and that they fully understand what the patients need. If this were not affected, then nurses would end up with lots of unnecessary errors that would eventually lead to risks to patient safety. Sampling Methods To collect data, it is necessary to have a sample that represents the entire population. This sample is used to represent the entire population, and any statistical test done with the sample would reflect the whole population. It is, therefore, necessary that a clear procedure be used to identify the sample to be used to represent the entire population. This will ensure that we get a clear picture of the entire population without being discriminative to any part of the population (Frankel 70). The research is to take place in hospital recovery wards and 10 individuals have to be selected from the entire population of patients who have undergone hip surgery. To get this number, probability sampling is used. This is the method where members of the population are selected randomly without discriminating anyone and reaching a specific number to use in the test. Being patients with a similar condition, the results would not be discriminative at all. One of the ethical issues that arise is patient confidentiality. Patients are very much concerned about their medical conditions and many are not comfortable discussing these issues with everyone. However, after thorough convincing that none of their medical information would be leaked out, most patients agreed to take the test. The other ethical issue that arose from the sampling is the credibility of the sampling process. Some patients felt that it was not fair to use a few members of the group to represent the entire population and that all of them could have been used. It was necessary to convince them that using the entire population would be tedious and at the same time would encourage many errors during the analysis period. They had to understand that it was much easier to deal with less people, but they were assured that the sampling method would not be discriminative at all (Manojlovich 111). Methodology Data collection is very crucial to the conclusion and result of the entire research. Poor data collection leads to poor conclusions and results. Questionnaires and interviews are the main form of data collection methods used. The questions to be used to collect data have to be relevant to the research (Frankel 99). One of the major questions asked was the way that caregivers were able to present themselves. The questionnaires should have four choices in which the patient is able to grade the question as excellent, good, fair or poor. For example, one question that the patient is to be asked is to categorize their interactions with the caregivers. The respondents are to use the four choices given to rate this. In the interview section, the patients are not given options to explain in detail their personal feelings; rather, they are to give direct answers as either yes or no. For example, one question that the interviewer was to ask the patients was if they had any problems with the caregivers (Seifert 76). The patient had to answer if they had any problem or if they had no problem. The answers in the interview were, therefore, to come as a “yes” or a “no.” This kind of answer is very easy to quantify and analyze using statistical methods. Observations were also critical; the interviewer was to write down some of the observations that they saw about customer conditions (DerGurahian 133). It is, however, important to note that all patients are considered to be from operations and therefore, have similar conditions. Data Analysis Analysis of collected data is vital to the research as it ensures that clear and relevant conclusions are made. Without proper analysis, the whole research would be useless as the conclusion would not be true (DerGurahian 23). The first thing to do in this step is to come up with a hypothesis. In our case, the null hypothesis is: “There is a relationship between good and effective communication and patient safety.” The alternative hypothesis is: “There is no relationship between good and effective communication and patient safety.” After coming up with the hypothesis, it is necessary to come up with the test statistics and the critical region. All this should be done before deciding on which hypothesis tests to use. The critical region and the test statistics are vital to the conclusions that will be made as they ensure that we know and define the test data. The critical region ensures that we get to have the boundary in which conclusions can be made. The best hypothesis test to use is chi square test of independence. This test is done to know if there is a relationship between two variables. ANOVA can also be used to agree or disagree with a hypothesis and in many cases, it is highly recommended. However, since this test needs to test a hypothesis and at the same time check if there is some correlation, both tests should be used (DerGurahian 123). Potential Limitations One of the major potential limitations is wrong responses from the respondents. Some respondents might give wrong information just to protect themselves or other nurses. Due to this, it is vital for the patients to understand the role of honesty in this research. Patients need to understand that for the research to be a success, they should give the right information. The researcher also needs to ensure that when being interviewed, the interviewer should be someone who does not know the patient to prevent the patient from holding personal information. Another major limitation is the sampling method. If samples are not properly taken, then there is a high chance that the samples would not reflect the entire population and so this would not bring out a true conclusion (DerGurahian 128). The research sampling should, therefore, be done professionally to avoid any chance of problems arising. The management is also a major potential limitation. The management should be able to allow the researcher access to the patients and to be able to avail personal medical information of the patient (Frankel 90). Without this, the research is not possible. The management should be convinced on the relevance of the research so that they can give in and allow success of this crucial operation. Proper advice is necessary to ensure that the management is aware of the benefits of the research. Conclusion The above research would be very crucial to the entire nursing body. With the conclusions from this research, the entire caretaking body is able to know that indeed, there is a relationship between efficient and effective communication and patient safety. This would encourage not only nurses but also patients to practice this very important concept in the healthcare industry. The result and conclusion of this research are, therefore, vital to the entire nursing profession. Works Cited DerGurahian, Jean. "Improving Patient Safety." Modern healthcare 38.20 (2008): 14-133. Print.  Frankel, Allan. "WalkRounds Improve Patient Safety." Healthcare executive 23.2 (2008): 23-28. Print. Manojlovich, Milisa, Cathy L. Antonakos, and David. L. Ronis. “Intensive Care Units, Communication between Nurses and Physicians, and Patients’ Outcomes.” Am J Crit Care 18.1 (2009): 21-30. Print. Seifert, Patricia C. "Communication and Safety." Association of Operating Room Nurses (AORN) Journal 95.5 (2012): 562-4. Print. Turkoski, Beatrice B. "Improving Patient Safety by Improving Medication Communication." Orthopaedic Nursing 28.3 (2009): 150-2. Print. Read More