Effective Communication: Improving Health Care Outcomes

There is a lot of challenges of a 3-way consultation between children, parents and the doctor, but if the pediatrician communicates effectively, the challenges will be overcome and will improve the health care outcomes. Effective communication is unambiguous and is needed to inform the patient and parents about the disease, treatment, complications of the disease. The quality of the process of communication between the patient/family and the physician affects the quality of their collaborative relationship, patient behavior, and health outcomes. Communication is important for pediatricians because they need the ability to explain a child’s illness and its treatment clearly and completely. The treatment options should be explained in a way so that parents and
Advances in communication technology have expanded the ability of clinicians to reach patients and patients to communicate with clinicians to exchange information, make decisions and enhance peer and clinical support. Sharing this information systematically and timely with enough personal contact between pediatrician and patient/parent can lead to more effective coordination of care. For example, e-mail communication is faster, simpler, and asynchronous. This allows continuous access and more participation between the patient, pediatrician, and family. However, it is important to note that some studies show that this form of communication hasn’t been used well by pediatricians. Some concerns are about the volume of emails being received by pediatricians and the impact of workflow and decreases in face-to-face visits (which is the richest communication medium). Finally, a survey of young patients was done by the Health Commission in 2004 suggested that many kids aren’t satisfied with the way health workers relate to them while they are in the