ABOR1040 Cultural Competency In Health Services

• Identify the rationale for the presentation

• Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the topic and support your discussion with refereed publications

• Used concise and appropriate academic English free from spelling and grammatical mistakes

Introduction

There exists a strong positive relationship between the communication skills of the healthcare providers and the capacity of the patient to follow through the medical recommendation, adopt preventive healthcare behavior and manage chronic healthcare condition all by themselves. The perception of the healthcare users of the quality of the service provided by a healthcare home is highly dependent on the quality of interaction between them and the healthcare service provider. According to the researchers, the clinical ability to listen, explain as well as emphasize has the potential to impose a profound effect on functional as well as biological health outcomes along with satisfaction of the patient and experience of care (Heijmans et al. 2015). The rationale of the report is to provide effective knowledge and information about the importance of effective communication and health literacy in the healthcare environment. Apart from that the purpose of the report also includes analysis and evolution of strategies to enforce effective communication ad healthcare literacy within the workplace.

Importance of effective communication in healthcare environment

Communication in healthcare setting is considered to be one of the the mot crucial tools the healthcare service providers posses to provide effective care to the patients and this enhance their satisfaction.

1. Effective communication helps the healthcare service users to feel comfortable

Considering the fact majority of the healthcare service users are highly anxious and tensed about their health, tests and treatments provided to them, several time they demonstrate aggressiveness and rude behavior. Possessing good communication with the healthcare service providers has the potential to reduce the anxiety an d build confidence within the patient.

2. Effective communication helps he healthcare service users to feel valued

Considering the fact that majority of the healthcare home in Australia treats patients from different cultural background, lack of effective communication may make them feel unwelcomed and this in turn can impose negative impact on their health and acceptance of treatment. Hence, it is highly crucial for healthcare service users to demonstrate respect and sympathy for their feelings and culture. This demonstration will help the healthcare service users to feel valued and thus will enhance their satisfaction level.

3. Effective communication between the healthcare employees enhance the quality of healthcare service

Good communication is crucial during discussing the requirements of the patients, crucial information regarding the history of the patient and the upcoming steps that needs to be taken to ensure effective treatment. Cultural difference between healthcare professionals has the potential to get enhanced due to ineffective communication and that may lead to conflict.  This in turn enhances the risk of patient injuries, malpractices and even death goes up. This type of incidence can only be prevented by ensuring effective communication among the healthcare service users. In order to ensure effective communication within the healthcare professionals several technologies has been used by healthcare organizations. For instance, the exchange of information during the change in shift is often found to be a lengthy process (Beauchamp et al., 2015). Additionally, the system associated with the exchange of information between nurses is often not well organized. Several time nurses are fund to write notes n the scrubs. As a result of ineffective communication, crucial details often get left out and treatment or medication that has been given to the patient once is repeated. This phenomenon often results in deterioration of the health of the patients. In order to deal with this issue, the management of several organizations is incorporating software that allows good communication and information distribution during change of shift.

Strategy to implement effective communication in healthcare environment

Considering the fact that ineffective communication between healthcare professionals and the service users lead to a negative workplace culture along with inferior quality of service, the following strategies can eradicate the issue y implementing effective communication within the organization.

1. Incorporating effective communication in the healthcare organization’s compulsory training program

According to the researchers, majority of the healthcare homes in Australia recruits employees from across the world and hence the organizations are cross cultural (Meuter et al., 2015).  Since the cultural origin of the employees varies, cultural conflicts are frequent which in turn deteriorates the quality of service offered and the job satisfaction of the employees.

In order to deal with the issue, both newly appointed as well as experienced employees should be provide with mandatory training sessions where they will be taught about the importance of effective communication between themselves as well as with the patients. Along with that, instruction will be provided to them about how to clarify their questions and verify the feelings and thoughts of the healthcare service users and engage themselves in empathetic listening.

2. Creating effective communication a part of the culture of the healthcare organization

Provision of the training is not enough to enforce effective communication. Hence the leaders of the organization must demonstrate positive behavior and make it a core part of the workplace culture. This in turn will encourage the healthcare staffs to act similarly (Gianduzzo et al., 2016).  Communication can also be incorporated in employees evolution an feedbacks. Apart from that, rewarding the employees who demonstrates good communication will also help the management to incorporate communication in organizational culture.

3. Implementing interpreters as a communication tool so that cross cultural patients can also communicate effectively

Often it has been observed that the communication between the healthcare service provider and users are getting hampered due to language barrier. This can lead to several misunderstanding which has the potential to impose negative impact on the treatment of the patient (McCaffery et al., 2016). Recruiting an interpreter has the potential to solve the issue. Recruiting interpreter will not only help the healthcare service providers to understand the specific issues of the patients but will also help them to demonstrate empathy and support that will enhance the satisfaction of the healthcare service users.

4. Implementing a healthcare service user satisfaction survey

Receiving feedbacks from the patients provides the healthcare service provides with the insights about the experience of the patient. This in turn will help them to assess the loophole in the process and eradicate the same to enhance the satisfaction of the healthcare service users.

5. Scheduling regular meeting with the employees

Professional development along with learning can be considered as the key to improve the overall communication skills. Hence monthly meetings should be scheduled with the staffs in order to enhance the discuss the survey feedback of the patients and access the areas of strengths as well as weaknesses (Jorm, 2015). This will help the management in effective decision making. Incorporating employees in the decision making will also empower the employees and enhance their commitment towards the organization.

Importance of health literacy in healthcare environment

The term health literacy is defined as the capacity of individuals to obtain, process and understand basic health information in order to make appropriate health decisions. The chief purpose of health literacy is to enhance the degree of safety of the healthcare service users and protect them from healthcare related harms. According to researchers, patients with limited healthcare literacy are less likely to report receiving patient-centered communication at their health care organization compared to those with adequate health literacy (Jayasinghe et al., 2016). Health literacy is essential for successful access to care and use of services, self-care of chronic conditions, and maintenance of health and wellness. It is considered to be the fundamental to healthcare sine it make the healthcare service users to possess a active role while making decisions and managing the diseases. According to researchers, nearly half of the adult population of Australia lack health literacy skills that is required to understand as well as act on the demand of health system and health information (Diviani, 2015). The survey also states that merely 12 percent of the adults posses appropriate health literacy proficiency in order to perform complex health tasks tha includes calculating the share of an employee of the health insurance costs.

Strategy to implement health literacy in healthcare environment

According to researchers, addressing health literacy requires a collaborative and coordinated approach (Johnson, 2014). In order to implement health literacy in the workplace the following steps should be taken by the management of healthcare homes.

1. Embedding health literacy into systems: This process includes development and implementations of policies at both social as well as organizational level that support action to address health literacy. Altering the funding mechanizes to encourage the awareness on health literacy can be done by the management. Alog with that healthcare staffs should be provided with effective training o educate the healthcare users about their issue (O’Halloran et al., 2015).
2. Providing the healthcare service users with adequate knowledge: Healthcare users will be provided with detailed information about their specific diseases. The process of providing information should be effective enough to prevent panics among the healthcare service users. In contrary, effective information about the remedies they can opt to get healed easily will enhance their confidence and efficiency to deal with the diseases (Lim, McCabe & Purcell, 2017).
3. Asking open-ended question to the health care service users: In order to ensure that the healthcare service users have understood the information provided by the nurses effectively, open-ended questions about his feelings about the issue and how he is planning to cope up with the same should be asked (Cheng & Dunn, 2015). This will help the healthcare professionals to access whether the healthcare service users are confident enough about their health literacy.
4. Using the teach back communication method: The teach back communication method ensures that the healthcare service users has gained enough knowledge and has understood the instruction effectively (Coles et al., 2016).
5. Integrating health literacy into education: This process includes educating consumers as well as healthcare providers. It can include population health programs, health promotions as well as education strategies, social marketing and school health education (Moore et al., 2018).

Conclusion

From the above discussion it can be concluded that both effective communication and healthcare literacy is highly crucial to enhance the quality of contemporary healthcare system. Enforcing effecting communication within the healthcare service users and service providers has the potential to enhance the satisfaction of the patient. Along with that, Effective communication within the employees helps the same to eradicate conflict between the employees. Healthcare literacy, on the other hand, within the health care users has the potential to protect them from health related harms. Hence, Healthcare organizations should incorporate effective tools in order to ensure efficient communication and healthcare literacy within the organization.

References

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Cheng, C., & Dunn, M. (2015). Health literacy and the Internet: a study on the readability of Australian online health information. Australian and New Zealand journal of public health, 39(4), 309-314. Doi. : 10.1111/1753-6405.12341

Coles, M. E., Ravid, A., Gibb, B., George-Denn, D., Bronstein, L. R., & McLeod, S. (2016). Adolescent mental health literacy: Young people’s knowledge of depression and social anxiety disorder. Journal of Adolescent Health, 58(1), 57-62. Retrieved from: https://mood.binghamton.edu/Publications/2016_JAH_Coles%20et%20al_Mental%20health%20literacy.pdf

Diviani, N., van den Putte, B., Giani, S., & van Weert, J. C. (2015). Low health literacy and evaluation of online health information: a systematic review of the literature. Journal of medical Internet research, 17(5). Retrieved from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4468598/

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Johnson, A. (2014). Health literacy, does it make a difference?. Australian Journal of Advanced Nursing, The, 31(3), 39. Retrieved from: https://repositorio.ufc.br/bitstream/riufc/9160/1/2014_art_ghcunha.pdf#page=40

Jorm, A. F. (2015). Why we need the concept of “mental health literacy”. Health communication, 30(12), 1166-1168. Retrieved from: https://minerva-access.unimelb.edu.au/bitstream/handle/11343/91137/why%20we%20need%20the.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y

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Moore, P. M., Rivera, S., Bravo?Soto, G. A., Olivares, C., & Lawrie, T. A. (2018). Communication skills training for healthcare professionals working with people who have cancer. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (7). Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Theresa_Lawrie/publication/326596087_Communication_skills_training_for_healthcare_professionals_working_with_people_who_have_cancer/links/5b5ed0bfaca272a2d674a4ad/Communication-skills-training-for-healthcare-professionals-working-with-people-who-have-cancer.pdf

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