One in ten patient safety incidents in hospitals due to poor communication

Patients’ lives are being put at risk by poor communication from healthcare professionals in hospitals worldwide, according to new research.

The analysis included 46 studies, published between 2013 and 2024, involving over 67,000 patients across Europe, North and South America, Asia and Australia. And the findings are alarming. The authors discovered that poor communication was the sole cause of patient-safety incidents in over one in ten cases and contributed to causing incidents in one in four cases.

These aren’t just statistics, they represent real people harmed by preventable errors.

In one documented case, a doctor accidentally shut off a patient’s Amiodarone drip (a drug to treat heart arrhythmias) while silencing a beeping pump. The doctor failed to tell the nurse, and the patient’s heart rate spiked dangerously.

In another example, a patient died after a nurse failed to tell a surgeon that the patient was experiencing abdominal pains following surgery and had a low red blood cell count – clear indicators of internal bleeding. The patient later died from a haemorrhage that could have been prevented with adequate communication.

These findings confirm what many healthcare professionals have long suspected: communication breakdowns directly threaten patient safety. What’s particularly concerning is that these incidents cut across different healthcare systems worldwide.

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Source: The Conversation. 28 April 2025