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Showing results for tags 'Communication'.
Found 1,212 results
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Content ArticleThis is a book written to celebrate the humanity of people, and to share experiences of what brilliant care and support can look like for families with learning disabled or autistic children and adults. Sara Ryan steers clear of jargon and 'doublespeak' to conjure authentic experiences of families. Speaking with families and professionals, she conveys the love, laughter and joy which binds families and the harsh realities many face; of separation from loved ones, substandard care and frustration and helplessness in the face of inflexible services. From their experiences, Sara looks to capture those pockets of brilliance that families have encountered, and which outstanding practitioners have pioneered, for us all to learn from. We know so much about what support and services should look like in order to enable flourishing lives - this book aims to help families and professionals to achieve it, together.
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Content ArticleIn his latest blog, Steven Shorrock explores what humanistic values and human decency means in management and organisational behaviour. Steven Shorrock is an interdisciplinary humanistic, systems and design practitioner interested in human work from multiple perspectives.
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Content ArticleIn this blog, Patient Safety Learning sets out its response to NHS England and NHS Improvement’s draft Framework for involving patients in patient safety. We commend the intention and share thoughts on our perspective on this important patient safety issue. We make proposals for how to strengthen patient engagement and co-production.
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Content ArticleCOVID-19 brings an enormous set of challenges to hospitals around the world. One challenge in particular, the current mental state of healthcare workers, is now taking centre stage as clinicians face delivering difficult news to patients and their families about what is happening, what to expect, and how to prepare. ECRI and RLDatix came together to deliver a special webcast led by Dr Tim McDonald, an expert on Communication and Optimal Resolution (CANDOR). A recording of the webinar can be viewed below.
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Content ArticleQuality improvement measures can help health care organisations make health information easy to understand and health systems easy to navigate. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) obtained consensus from experts on the usefulness, meaningfulness, feasibility, and face validity of 22 measures that can help organisations seeking to become more health literate.
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AHRQ Pharmacy Health Literacy Center
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Medicine management
This site provides pharmacists with recently released health literacy tools and other resources from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Pharmacy health literacy is the degree to which individuals are able to obtain, process, and understand basic health and medication information and pharmacy services needed to make appropriate health decisions. Only 12% of adults have proficient health literacy (e.g., can interpret the prescription label correctly). Medication errors are likely higher with patients with limited health literacy, as they are more likely to misinterpret the prescription label information and auxiliary labels. Studies document an association between low literacy and poor health outcomes. -
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AHRQ's Re-Engineered Discharge toolkit
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Discharge
The Re-Engineered Discharge (RED) Toolkit helps re-design the discharge process using health literacy and patient safety strategies. Research showed that the RED was effective at reducing readmissions and post-hospital emergency department visits. The RED Toolkit includes templates for easy-to-understand discharge instructions and post-discharge telephone calls, and guidance on delivering the RED to diverse populations. This is part of AHRQ's health literacy improvement tools to help healthcare organisations, leaders and professionals improve health literacy. -
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AHRQ's easy-to-understand telehealth consent form
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Telehealth
AHRQ's easy-to-understand telehealth consent form is part of AHRQ's Health Literacy Improvement Tools to help healthcare organisations, leaders and professionals improve health literacy. AHRQ's telehealth consent resources include a sample telehealth consent form that is easy to understand and how-to guidance for clinicians on obtaining informed consent for telehealth. The consent form includes provisions for healthcare providers that have curtailed in-person visits due to COVID-19. Clinicians can use the easy-to-understand language from the form when they are having the consent discussion and can use the form as a checklist to make sure they have covered all the information required by informed consent rules. -
Content ArticleThe AHRQ Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit, 2nd edition, can help primary care practices reduce the complexity of health care, increase patient understanding of health information, and enhance support for patients of all health literacy levels. Health literacy universal precautions are the steps that practices take when they assume that all patients may have difficulty comprehending health information and accessing health services. Health literacy universal precautions are aimed at: Simplifying communication with and confirming comprehension for all patients, so that the risk of miscommunication is minimized. Making the office environment and health care system easier to navigate. Supporting patients' efforts to improve their health.
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Some personal reflections on how the varieties of human work as summarised by Steven Shorrock apply to healthcare and personal experiences within the NHS. I offer some considerations of how this type of thinking should inform the activity of those working in patient safety oversight roles where they are not in close and regular contact with staff delivering frontline services. -
Content ArticleThe World Health Organization (WHO) is actively exploring the role of compassion in quality health care. This Global Health Compassion Rounds (GHCR) highlighted the compelling evidence around compassion and quality care—not only for patients, but also for providers and health care organisations. Respondents offered their views of the implications of this evidence at national, district, and community levels of care.
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Content ArticlePhysicians and patients have concerns associated with a shift toward virtual medicine. This interview with a Dr Paul Hyman, a primary care physician, highlights how the loss of physical touch and in-person communication could negatively affect care and the patient/physician relationship.
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Content ArticleHealthcare systems are operating in an environment that is increasingly moving toward value-based payments that reward good health outcomes and patient experience. An impediment to success in this environment, however, is that both health care delivery systems and health information are extremely complicated. The level of complexity stymies many people and hinders them from making informed preventive care and self-management decisions. Health systems are finding that they cannot achieve improved patient outcomes or experiences without improving how health care professionals communicate with and support patients. Health systems have begun to respond to the mismatch between patients’ capabilities and the health literacy-related demands of the healthcare system. A new term has emerged – the health literate organisation – that describes organisations that aspire to make it easier for people to navigate, understand, and use information and services to take care of their health. Health literate organisations, in turn, need healthcare professionals who have health literacy knowledge and skills, such as being able to communicate effectively, break down health goals into manageable steps, and connect people with the resources they need to be successful Harris et al. explores health literate care in this Commentary for the National Academy of Medicine.
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Content ArticleThe Canadian Patient Safety Institute (CPSI) outlines the process in Canada if you have a question or a concern about the healthcare services you have received.
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Content ArticleIn September, Patient Safety Learning worked with Gill Phillips, Director of Nutshell Communications Ltd, to host an online workshop with staff and patients on the subject of staff safety, the theme of this year's World Patient Safety Day. Known as Whose Shoes?®, the workshop was an an intimate, highly participative event, giving participants the chance to talk openly about their personal experiences around key issues in staff safety and how they impact patient safety.
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Content Article"Healthcare systems need to act in equal measures to both enable the recovery of patients and families it has harmed, and to protect future patients.... Yet providing what is set out in the Duty of Candour to harmed patients has not been framed as providing care to make sick or injured people better and/or to minimise their pain and suffering." In this blog, Jo Hughes explains why we need to reframe the Duty of Candour and explores what needs to change.
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Content ArticleParents know better than anyone if their child is not behaving as they usually do or seem different in some way. Studies have shown that caregivers are often the first people to spot changes in the health of their child, even when in a clinical environment. You should feel able to raise any concerns if you think something is ‘just not right’ with your child. Great Ormond Street Hospital has produced guidance on what to look out for and how to raise a concern if you are worried about your child when in hospital.
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Content ArticleWhat Your Patient Is Thinking (WYPIT) is a BMJ series led and edited by patients and carers. The articles are written by patients and carers and are a key part of The BMJ’s campaign to increase partnership with patients and public in healthcare. They contain messages that are thought provoking, and challenging for clinical readers of The BMJ, who mainly consist of doctors from across the world. Articles can be about any aspect of patient or carer experiences. This might include what it is like for you to live with your condition or as a carer or your experience of an appointment or procedure. This might be in relation to a single healthcare appointment to those from a lifetime of managing a long term health condition. It is important for the piece to include lessons for doctors. They can focus on a particular aspect of care or treatment, offer a new angle on a familiar situation, or ask controversial questions from the patient or carer's perspective. They can be triggered by good or bad experiences but all of them should give healthcare professionals and, or policy makers practical things that they can do differently tomorrow as a result of reading the article. The BMJ patient and clinical editors will work with you to develop your piece and to suggest specific questions to prompt reflection and action from the readership, that follow from the key points of your article. Guidance if you would like to contribute to the "What Your Patient is Thinking" series.
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Content ArticleThe health literacy field has evolved over several decades. Its initial focus was on individuals who had poor literacy skills. Now there is a broad recognition that everyone—not just those with limited literacy—face challenges in understanding health information and navigating the healthcare system. Acknowledging that the healthcare system is overly complex, healthcare organisations have started to take responsibility to ensure that everyone, especially the vulnerable, is able to find, understand, and use health information and services. The Agency for Healthcare Research Quality (AHRQ) provides national health literacy leadership. AHRQ’s health literacy work spans from developing improvement tools, to designing professional training and education, to funding and synthesising health literacy research. You can find health literacy improvement tools, educational and training, and publications on the AHRQ Health Literacy website.
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Content ArticleAll human activity, along with associated emergent problematic situations and opportunities, is embedded in context. The ‘context’ is, however, a a melange of different contexts. In our attempts at understanding and intervening, rarely do we spend much time trying to understand context, especially as it applies to the current situation, and how history has influenced where we are. Instead, we tend to: a) make assumptions about context, but not make these explicit, resulting in different unspoken and untested assumptions; b) limit contextual analysis to proximal, ‘obvious’ or uncontroversial aspects; or c) jump to a potential solution (or a way to realise an opportunity), shortly followed by planning for this intervention (which has the important function of helping us to feel in control, thus relieving our anxiety – at least temporarily). An approach Steven Shorrock has found useful is to spend time considering contextual influences (e.g., on decision making, at multiple levels of organisations) on problematic situations or potential solutions, more explicitly. He shares this in his latest blog.
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Rethinking Patient Safety: Maternity safety (4 October 2020)
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Maternity
Suzette Woodward reflects on the recent reports and research into maternal safety and why we need to shift to a Safety II approach. -
Content ArticleAlthough airway safety is known to be one of the key components in safe care, thousands of patients lose their lives each year to poor airway management and unplanned extubations. In this Patient Safety Movement webinar, the team discusses starting an unplanned extubation project without buy-in from others, multi-institutional collaboration, pushback from leaders, colleagues, or other organisations, the future of interventions, clinicians who have experience with unplanned extubations as key advocates, and cross-checking pediatric and adult safety efforts. The panel ends with Drew Hughes’ story and the team emphasises taking a moment to ground yourself in your practice and the importance of speaking up when you think the patient is at risk.
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Content ArticleInfographic from the Patient Safety Movement on what is needed when a patient is harmed and why we need to involve patients and families throughout the process.
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Content ArticleThe Association of Anaesthetists has published two posters highlighting what to do if you see unprofessional behaviours to make hospitals safer for patients and staff.
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Content ArticleSteve Turner and colleagues have been working on ways to put people in charge of their own healthcare. Nowhere is this more important than for people with a variety of conditions or illnesses. Their approach involves people attending a group session on medicines, and then having the option of reviewing their medicines individually in a 3/4-hour session with two health professionals (e.g. a prescriber and a pharmacist). They provide people with their own notes in the form of a written action plan, which they can share with clinicians. Benefits identified to date include improved adherence with medicines; improved quality of life; reduced unnecessary medicines; identification and actions on previously unreported patient safety issues; a potential reduction in ‘bouncing’ referrals, less missing information and fewer unnecessary contacts with services. Steve explains more about Patient Led Clinical Education© and Patient Led Clinical Medicines Review™ in this blog.
