Communicating In Hospital Emergency Departments

This book was conceived in response to the increasing recognition of the central role of communication in effective healthcare delivery, particularly in high-stress contexts. Over a three-year period, the research team investigated communication between patients and clinicians in five representative emergency departments (EDs). The book describes the communicative complexity and intensity of work in the ED and identifies the features of successful patient-clinician interactions. Drawing on authentic examples of communication within the ED, the book provides comprehensive communication strategies for healthcare professionals that can be readily integrated into everyday practice. ‘Professor Diana Slade and her colleagues have written an innovative and practical book on communication and relationships in emergency departments and their effects on the patient experience. Rarely does one find a book that so seamlessly translates research findings into practical action strategies. The book is an invaluable resource for the training of physicians, nurses, hospital administrators and others in healthcare.’ - Elizabeth A. Rider, MSW, MD, FAAP, Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School ‘My participation in the UTS Emergency Communication project provided extraordinary insights into the complexities and subtleties of communication encounters during a patient’s emergency department journey. This project has made a lasting impact on my daily work, and I hope will improve emergency patient care into the future.’ - Dr Nick Taylor, Emergency Medicine Specialist, The Canberra Hospital ‘The captured clinical conversations between doctors, nurses and patients are fascinating... The discussion and conclusions provide a rare insight into an integral and critical component of Emergency Medicine practice. The team, led by Professor Slade, was truly unobtrusive, professional and personable.’ - Dr Marian Lee, Emergency Physician, Director of Emergency Medicine Training

Widely varying patient needs, a wide provider mix, significant power differentials, and a heightened emotional state all contribute to barriers in communication in the medical field and all of these elements are magnified in an emergency department. Communication in Emergency Medicine highlights key challenges to effective communication in Emergency Medicine that may be experienced by healthcare providers, students, nurses, and even hospital administrators. The text addresses these pitfalls by demonstrating how a mix of foundational communication techniques and leadership skills can be used to successfully overcome barriers in information exchange highlighted by real-life clinical scenarios with an emphasis on avoidable pitfalls. Chapters explore principles of communication, patient and family interactions, and communications within and outside of the healthcare system, rounding off with a number of case studies. The approach of utilizing the environment of an emergency department with high stakes conflicts faced every day by medical professionals distinguishes Communication in Emergency Medicine as an ideal resource for Emergency Medicine providers, with lessons which can also be applied in many other settings as well.

For patients and their loved ones, no care decisions are more profound than those made near the end of life. Unfortunately, the experience of dying in the United States is often characterized by fragmented care, inadequate treatment of distressing symptoms, frequent transitions among care settings, and enormous care responsibilities for families. According to this report, the current health care system of rendering more intensive services than are necessary and desired by patients, and the lack of coordination among programs increases risks to patients and creates avoidable burdens on them and their families. Dying in America is a study of the current state of health care for persons of all ages who are nearing the end of life. Death is not a strictly medical event. Ideally, health care for those nearing the end of life harmonizes with social, psychological, and spiritual support. All people with advanced illnesses who may be approaching the end of life are entitled to access to high-quality, compassionate, evidence-based care, consistent with their wishes. Dying in America evaluates strategies to integrate care into a person- and family-centered, team-based framework, and makes recommendations to create a system that coordinates care and supports and respects the choices of patients and their families. The findings and recommendations of this report will address the needs of patients and their families and assist policy makers, clinicians and their educational and credentialing bodies, leaders of health care delivery and financing organizations, researchers, public and private funders, religious and community leaders, advocates of better care, journalists, and the public to provide the best care possible for people nearing the end of life.

It’s not just health professionals in Emergency Departments that need to communicate effectively under difficult conditions involving time pressure, high stress, and conflict. Executives, senior managers and leaders have this need too. Through simple, practical and effective tools validated by Emergency Department clinicians, this book provides health professionals with a team-based approach for being more effective communicators and influencers along the patient care journey. If this approach can work in the ED, we believe it can be successful in other sectors and settings too. Based on COIN for ED Professionals™, a peer-reviewed and published communication and influencing skills training program developed for Emergency Department health professionals, this book: •presents the RESPECT model, a 7 principled framework enabling health professionals to influence effectively and respectfully in difficult and high stress situations •introduces the approach of action learning, the secret to continuous improvement •provides a rich collection of real stories from clinicians, case-studies, exercises, activities and self-assessment tools targeting professionals seeking to significantly improve not only their own communication and influencing skills, but also those of their colleagues.

Today our emergency care system faces an epidemic of crowded emergency departments, patients boarding in hallways waiting to be admitted, and daily ambulance diversions. Hospital-Based Emergency Care addresses the difficulty of balancing the roles of hospital-based emergency and trauma care, not simply urgent and lifesaving care, but also safety net care for uninsured patients, public health surveillance, disaster preparation, and adjunct care in the face of increasing patient volume and limited resources. This new book considers the multiple aspects to the emergency care system in the United States by exploring its strengths, limitations, and future challenges. The wide range of issues covered includes: • The role and impact of the emergency department within the larger hospital and health care system. • Patient flow and information technology. • Workforce issues across multiple disciplines. • Patient safety and the quality and efficiency of emergency care services. • Basic, clinical, and health services research relevant to emergency care. • Special challenges of emergency care in rural settings. Hospital-Based Emergency Care is one of three books in the Future of Emergency Care series. This book will be of particular interest to emergency care providers, professional organizations, and policy makers looking to address the deficiencies in emergency care systems.

The book, gathering the proceedings of the Future of Information and Communication Conference (FICC) 2018, is a remarkable collection of chapters covering a wide range of topics in areas of information and communication technologies and their applications to the real world. It includes 104 papers and posters by pioneering academic researchers, scientists, industrial engineers, and students from all around the world, which contribute to our understanding of relevant trends of current research on communication, data science, ambient intelligence, networking, computing, security and Internet of Things. This book collects state of the art chapters on all aspects of information science and communication technologies, from classical to intelligent, and covers both theory and applications of the latest technologies and methodologies. Presenting state-of-the-art intelligent methods and techniques for solving real-world problems along with a vision of the future research, this book is an interesting and useful resource. The chapter “Emergency Departments” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.