Oncology & Cancer

In today’s very, complex healthcare environment where a patient will easily interact with multiple care givers during their course of care/treatment and delivery. The key common issue for any harm or potential injury to the patient is Poor or Lack of CLEAR Communication. This presentation will review some simple ways to improve communication between the care giver and the patient/family, review the risks or outcome of care resulting from unclear communication and highlight some global solutions toward achieving a better improved communication plan between the patient and the provider.  JCI standard references will be incorporated as potential tools or possible requirements to be adopted by an organization as a guide for clearer forms of communication. Discussion during the presentation will highlight the one area during care where a clear level of communication and listening from both the patient and the care giver is crucial – that being at the point of DISCHARGE.  This is such an important step in the delivery of continuity of care but is often done very quickly and with very little follow up on the understanding of the discharge planning recommended. There will be a review of the types of Channels of Communication (either Verbal or Written) which is seemed to give the best outcome and when it is appropriate to utilize a certain channel of communication. The presentation will highlight the common causes of failures and demonstrate some of such failures which occur on a day to day basis globally with the use of JCI “International Patient Safety Goals” which could affect the course of care for the cancer patient during their treatment. There will be reference to a “white paper” which addressed the common issues of potential harm due to lack of clear and simple communications. These findings from the white paper will be linked to how one can identify the common barriers within an organization that fosters the lack of good communication. In addition, to the identification of the barriers, there will be time spend on review of the impact and challenges which will result in poor communication such as longer length of stay – increased medication errors – potential infections due to lack of understanding on basic prevention techniques – lack of required follow-up care, these are just a few of the potential impacts/challenges that are possible unsafe and non-quality outcomes resulting in RISK to the patient. Focus will be on medical orders and critical test results – cultural barriers – language issues – aging patient population – and how the international JCI standards could be use as a tool for monitoring the level of communication between the care giver and the patient to achieve a ZERO HARM outcome of care.