Professional Communication by Jean Ann Seago - Article Example

The problems and barriers that sometimes arise in relationships between physicians and nurses are signals of the absence of effective communication skills, which, in its turn, affects the attitude of patients towards nurses and the system of medical care in total. There have been multiple approaches to the issue of communication between a physician and a nurse: from the fields of cooperation, feminist studies, team psychology, cultural perspective, organizational behavior, human factors science, etc.

It has been proved that certain aspects of patient outcomes and safety are related to the level of this professional communication, and some of the communication strategies in hospitals turned out to be more effective than others. So the bottom line is – communication between nurses and physicians should be improved by all means, no matter what specific method is used (in the chapter among others the author lists such methods as recognizing corporate culture, quality improvement, continuous assessment, reducing conflict etc).

Pretty much all of these methods yield their results, proving effective, and there is no sufficient empirical evidence to prioritize any of them above the others. Claiming that “there is mixed or weak evidence to support using some of the techniques described in the cited literature”, Jean Ann Seago suggests a number of steps to be taken in the course of improving professional communication in a hospital – from evaluating strategies using measurable outcomes and selecting the one that suits the particular organization to slow and step-by-step implementation of these strategies during a long period of time.

All in all, I believe that improving professional communication in hospitals will produce a positive influence on the patients.