Addressing Barriers to Effective Communication

In healthcare setting, there are challenges which are met in everyday operations.  To address the challenges, there must be effective communication. Communication is important as it strengths the interaction and enhances knowledge.  In health care, communication plays a fundamental role in preventing medical errors and maintaining patients’ well-being (Marquis & Huston, 2009).  I once came across a situation where there was an ineffective communication in health care setting.  Nurses were sharing patients’ health information without consent. There was no moral respect since nurses were violating the patients’ rights through disclosing private details. In the health care, nurses had the obligation to maintain confidentiality unless given consent by the patient to disclose the information. The management was aware of the breach of confidentiality and to address this problem, the manager failed to communicate clearly about the issue and in this case, he used email to inform nurses about the issue and codes of ethics. Even though it is important to remind the workers on standards of practices through ethical programs, this issue required face to face communication so that members involved in unethical issue can understand the message delivered clearly (Marquis  & Huston, 2009). The information delivered through email was important and to clarify the concern, face to face communication could be effective. In other words, there was inarticulateness which led to message distortion. To communicate effectively about the ethical issue, clarity is important. In this case, the manager could use verbal communication since it could enhance understanding and work efficiency (Marquis & Huston, 2015).

 To address this issue and promote a better outcome, leaders within the healthcare organization could employ the social identity framing approach. Seyranian (2014) states that in order to bring social change, leaders should communicate the vision and align it with group prototype   such as norms, values and behaviors. Leaders are supposed to create ‘social identity construction’ and the role of the latter is to remind members their roles. The speeches in this process urge members to take collective actions. In addition social identity framing approach provides leader with communication tactics which promotes social change (Seyranian, 2014)

 

 

Reference

Marquis, B. L., & Huston, C. J. (2009). Leadership roles and management functions in nursing: Theory and

application. Philadelphia: Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

 

Seyranian, V. (2014). Social Identity Framing communication strategies for mobilizing social change. The

Leadership Quarterly, 25(3), 468-486.

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