Effective Communication Techniques in the Health Care Team
Preceptor Experience Week One In this assignment I will throw light on my first clinical week that I had to observe the effective communication skills on the med surgical floor. As I started my day, the charge nurse was assigning patients to the dayshift. As the patients were assigned, the nurses started their shift report from the night shift in the break room. In this report, they discussed the patients diagnosis, previous medical history, labs and all pertinent information about each assigned patient. On the med surg floor, we get the opportunity to experience all areas of patient care with patients coming from surgery, emergency department, direct admit, and transferred from other floors. The main focus on the med surg floor is providing a wide variety of patient care which includes taking vital signs every four hours, administering medications, treatments such as dressing changes and evaluation of all the treatments. The nurses have to interact with the doctors, respiratory therapists, physical therapists, pharmacists, laboratory and all members of health care team in order to give better patient care. After the shift report, the LPN gets the patients vital signs, the RN checks the patients lab reports, and calls the doctors to tell them about their patients abnormal lab values. The doctor gives a verbal order over the phone, which the nurse documents on the patients chart, and reads the order twice to the doctor in order to prevent any medicine errors. The doctor then has to cosign the order documented in the patients chart within 24 hours. This kind of clear communication between the nurse and the physician is an important resource in providing safe outcomes in patient care. Communication is one of the most important skills in effective communication between the nurse and patients. Effective