HEALTH PROFESSIONALS ROLE

Role of the Health Professionals

Role of the Health Professionals

Introduction

Why is communication important among in healthcare roles? Communication can be defined as successfully exchanging information between people. Three steps of communication are to gather the information, establish a relationship with the patient and being supportive through words. Communication can play a very important role in all the areas of the healthcare fields and its staff not only between the staff and patients but also between work colleagues. Many times with the high demands that healthcare facilities are facing, good communications skills are often overlooked and/or sometimes not seen as a priority. Today it seems that every time one goes to a doctor's office or another healthcare establishment everyone is in hurry and trying to get the patient out as quickly as possible and overlooking the importance of building a good relationship with their patients, so that they will feel at ease. The days were the building of a good rapport between the doctor and patients are long gone. This is mainly due to the managed care's having control over the doctor's time and resources. The effects of this stress are greater on the doctor than one would think. Whatever happened to the days when the doctors and their staff would in fact talk to their patients about their concerns and feelings? If healthcare providers would take a little more time to encourage their patients to ask questions, they may be more trusting. In turn, if managed care companies had more effective procedures in place to deal with the individual doctors, it would relieve any unnecessary stress on the physician. By doing this they would feel more open to establishing a more in-depth relationship with their patients(Du, 2005).

Discussion

Healthcare communication can be perceived and affected in many different ways. Some of these ways include the perspectives of the caregivers, the roles of the patients and the caregivers, cultural views or beliefs, over or under supporting strategies, boundaries of job parameters, body language, time restraints, environmental factors, and levels of stress and burnout.

“How would patient care change if the entire team of providers (nurses, doctors, and therapists) did not accommodate a patient's personal, cultural and religious preferences?” This is a question that I see as being important in the discussion of health care communications roles. Would this scenario result in patients not seeking services or getting the services they need? Would it cause a rise in health care costs due to claims against providers for services which were inappropriate for that patient? Would incorrect diagnosis be more likely? Would more patients fail to seek necessary health care? Some of these issues already exist today even with providers attempting to become more proficient in acknowledging and accommodating cultural and religious differences that relate directly to health care delivery. Today Health care providers take many different approaches to bridge barriers to communication and understanding that stem from racial, ethnic, cultural and linguistic differences. In recent years, the notion of "cultural competence" ...