Discussion: Poor Communication.

NOW F OR AN ORIGINAL PAPER ASSIGNMENT:Discussion: Poor Communication.

A few weeks back I had a patient who was not the most cooperative and did not follow doctors orders very well because in her eyes she didn’t want to. The patient was alert and oriented with bouts of confusion, but was mostly just noncompliant. The patient was seen by physical therapy and was encouraged to go to rehabilitation because she had come in with falls and was uncooperative with VNA services. The patient had a psych consult placed and was deemed “incompetent” by the doctor. This brought up a lot of issues with the nurses considering we were the ones taking care of her and although she never made the best decisions, she was still able to make proper decisions for herself. In my eyes, if someone is not willing to follow doctors orders that does not mean that they are incomepentent, but some people will always refuse to do what others want them to do even if it’s not the best option. In the end, there was a solution where both the physician, patient and family was in agreeance with that let the patient go home safely. Issues with ethical decisions would lead to multiple people getting involved with the situation. An ethics meeting within the hospital is a solution to solve ethical problems.

Another conflict experienced within the nursing field is lack of communication. There has been multiple issues within my work experienced caused by poor communication. The one thing as a nurse I always try to do is make sure that I understand what is being told to me, and make sure that I am explaining myself as thoroughly as possible to someone. Majority of the time what happens is that communication is not passed on to the correct party. An example of this is rounding with the doctors at the hospital. Majority of the time the doctors come so early in the morning that you have barely even seen any of your patients. While rounding doctors can decide if a patient is ready to be discharged home or not, but as the nurse there are so many other things that need to be done before actually making sure this person gets discharged safely. Throughout the day I communicate with my doctor accordingly. Most nurses may feel that it is annoying to doctors, but it seems that majority of the doctors appreciate an input on what is going on with the patient especially if they have not been discharged yet. Strategies to improve communication is to always clarify what you are hearing, saying, and making sure that everyone who is taking care of the patient is on the same page including: the physician, patient, family members, case manager, consulting providers, etc. Saberi, Z., Shahriari, M., & Yazdannik, A. R. (2019). The relationship between ethical conflict and nurses’ personal and organisational characteristics. Nursing Ethics, 26(7/8), 2427–2437. https://doi-org.ezproxy.snhu.edu/10.1177/0969733018791350