Exploring Workplace Communication Contributors to Primary Care Provider Experiences of Role Engagement.

The current and anticipated shortage of primary care providers (PCPs) has increased scholarly and health system leader attention on how to attract and retain qualified PCPs. To date, the research literature in medicine and in health communication has not fully considered the ways in which role communication may shape PCP engagement. Drawing upon role theory and role communication research, this qualitative study explores varied workplace interactions that contribute to PCPs' experience of engagement. We conducted focus groups and individual interviews with 21 PCPs employed in family medicine practices at a Midwestern health system. We used a grounded, iterative approach consisting of multiple stages of analysis to identify emergent themes. Communication with patients, interactions with health leaders, and electronic communication via the MyChart patient portal and electronic health record system function as major contributors to PCP engagement. Findings extend role theory scholarship by identifying specific communicative phenomena that makes up engaging working conditions and add to the role communication research literature by drawing connections between engagement and social support. We offer ideas for practical interventions at the study health system and other, similar organizations that desire to improve provider engagement and well-being.

Observing and Identifying Hospitalist Best Communication Practices in Patient Interactions.

This study identifies actual hospitalist best communication practices that optimize patient interactions in a busy hospital context. We observed and rated 36 hospitalists and 206 patient encounters using the Kalamazoo Essential Elements of Communication Checklist-Adapted (KEECC-A). We collected descriptive statistics of checklist scores and thematically analyzed fieldnotes to identify communication patterns. Results show hospitalists score highest and most frequently use three of seven KEECC-A dimensions: builds a relationship, shares information, and gathers information. We first identify exemplar behaviors and then provide statistical comparisons by professional and hospital tenure, gender, and day of rounding observed for these three dimensions. Male hospitalists scored higher than females for shares information and significant differences were found for gender between cross-sex patient-hospitalist interactions. Hospitalists early in their professional and hospital tenure received significantly lower ratings than mid-to-late career hospitalists in the three KEECC dimensions. Hospitalists observed on the first day of rounding received significantly higher ratings than those observed on a middle or last day. We offer interpretations to explain study findings and suggest interventions to help hospitalists with less-than-desirable communication skills.

Optimizing Hospitalist-Patient Communication: An Observation Study of Medical Encounter Quality.

BACKGROUND: Optimizing patient-hospitalist interactions heightens patient satisfaction, improves patient health outcomes, and improves hospitalist job satisfaction. A study was conducted to recognize hospitalist communication that enhance encounters, identify hospitalist behaviors for improvement interventions, and explore the association of time and gender with communication quality. METHODS: Researchers observed encounters between 36 hospitalists and 206 adult patients. All but 1 of the hospitalists was observed at a 410-bed, general medical and surgical facility in the Midwest. RESULTS: On the adapted Kalamazoo Essential Elements of Communication Checklist (KEECC), hospitalists scored highest on the Builds a Relationship, Shares Information, and Gathers Information dimensions. Participants were seen using multiple, effective verbal and nonverbal techniques to show care and concern, as well as create relational rapport, often while successfully sharing and obtaining clinical information. Hospitalists scored lowest on the Understands the Patient Perspective and Reaches Agreement dimensions. Hospitalists were observed infrequently and inconsistently empathizing with patients and rarely attempting to gain shared understanding and agreement from patients. Significant difference was found in sharing information (t [194] = 2.47; p = 0.01), with male hospitalists (mean [M] = 4.14; standard deviation [SD] = 1.01) more highly rated than female hospitalists (M = 3.78; SD = 0.90). Hospitalist and patient gender match revealed significant difference in sharing information (F [3,192] = 2.60; p = 0.05). Male hospitalists were rated higher interacting with female patients than female hospitalists interacting with male patients. CONCLUSION: Results identify specific hospitalist communication techniques that may ultimately contribute to better-quality medical encounters. Communication interventions are recommended.

Conflict and Stress in Hospital Nursing: Improving Communicative Responses to Enduring Professional Challenges.

Nurses function as central figures of health teams, coordinating direct care and communication between team members, patients, and their families. The importance of nurses to health care cannot be understated, but neither can the environmental struggles nurses routinely encounter in their jobs. Organizational communication and nursing scholarship show conflict and stress as two visible and ongoing challenges. This case study aims to (a) explore the ways conflict communication and communicative stress are experienced and endure in nursing and (b) understand how nurses discursively (mis)manage conflict and stress. Open-ended survey comments from nurses (N = 135) employed at a large teaching and research hospital were qualitatively analyzed. Weick's model of organizing, specifically his notion of communication cycles, emerged as a conceptual lens helpful for understanding cyclical conflict and stress. Results show that exclusionary communication, specifically nonparticipatory and unsupportive messages, contribute to nurse conflict and stress. Nurses tend to (mis)manage conflict and stress using respectful and disrespectful discourse. These communication patterns can facilitate or prohibit positive change. Metaphorically, nurse communicative conflict and stress can be depicted as fire. Relationships can go up in flames due to out-of-control fires in the form of destructive conflict. However, conflict and stress, like fire, can be harnessed for positive ends such as organizational decision making and innovation. Findings suggest conveying respect may help nurses manage and even avoid flames of conflict and stress. Solutions are offered to mitigate the effects of conflict and stress while developing respectful organizational cultures.

Improving interunit transitions of care between emergency physicians and hospital medicine physicians: a conceptual approach.

Patient care transitions across specialties involve more complexity than those within the same specialty, yet the unique social and technical features remain underexplored. Further, little consensus exists among researchers and practitioners about strategies to improve interspecialty communication. This concept article addresses these gaps by focusing on the hand-off process between emergency and hospital medicine physicians. Sensitivity to cultural and operational differences and a common set of expectations pertaining to hand-off content will more effectively prepare the next provider to act safely and efficiently when caring for the patient. Through a consensus decision-making process of experienced and published authorities in health care transitions, including physicians in both specialties as well as in communication studies, the authors propose content and style principles clinicians may use to improve transition communication. With representation from both community and academic settings, similarities and differences between emergency medicine and internal medicine are highlighted to heighten appreciation of the values, attitudes, and goals of each specialty, particularly pertaining to communication. The authors also examine different communication media, social and cultural behaviors, and tools that practitioners use to share patient care information. Quality measures are proposed within the structure, process, and outcome framework for institutions seeking to evaluate and monitor improvement strategies in hand-off performance. Validation studies to determine if these suggested improvements in transition communication will result in improved patient outcomes will be necessary. By exploring the dynamics of transition communication between specialties and suggesting best practices, the authors hope to strengthen hand-off skills and contribute to improved continuity of care.

Meeting the complex needs of the health care team: identification of nurse-team communication practices perceived to enhance patient outcomes.

Nurses occupy a central position in today's increasingly collaborative health care teams that place a premium on quality patient care. In this study we examined critical team processes and identified specific nurse-team communication practices that were perceived by team members to enhance patient outcomes. Fifty patient-care team members were interviewed to uncover forms of nurse communication perceived to improve team performance. Using a grounded theory approach and constant comparative analysis, study findings reveal two critical processes nurses contribute to as the most central and consistent members of the health care team: ensuring quality decisions and promoting a synergistic team. Moreover, the findings reveal 15 specific nurse-team communication practices that comprise these processes, and thereby are theorized to improve patient outcomes.

Exploring emergency physician-hospitalist handoff interactions: development of the Handoff Communication Assessment.

STUDY OBJECTIVE: We develop and evaluate the Handoff Communication Assessment, using actual handoffs of patient transfers from emergency department to inpatient care. METHODS: This was an observational qualitative study. We derived a Handoff Communication Assessment tool, using categories from discourse coding described in physician-patient communication, previous handoff research in medicine, health communication, and health systems engineering and pilot data from 3 physician-hospitalist handoffs. The resulting tool consists of 2 typologies, content and language form. We applied the tool to a convenience sample of 15 emergency physician-to-hospitalist handoffs occurring at a community teaching hospital. Using discourse analysis, we assigned utterances into categories and determined the frequency of utterances in each category and by physician role. RESULTS: The tool contains 11 content categories reflecting topics of patient presentation, assessment, and professional environment and 11 language form categories representing information-seeking, information-giving, and information-verifying behaviors. The Handoff Communication Assessment showed good interrater reliability for content (kappa=0.71) and language form (kappa=0.84). We analyzed 742 utterances, which provided the following preliminary findings: emergency physicians talked more during handoffs (67.7% of all utterances) compared with hospitalists (32.3% of all utterances). Content focused on patient presentation (43.6%), professional environment (36%), and assessment (20.3%). Form was mostly information-giving (90.7%) with periodic information-seeking utterances (8.8%) and rarely information-verifying utterances (0.4%). Questions accounted for less than 10% of all utterances. CONCLUSION: We were able to develop and use the Handoff Communication Assessment to analyze content and structure of handoff communication between emergency physicians and hospitalists at a single center. In this preliminary application of the tool, we found that emergency physician-to-hospitalist handoffs primarily consist of information giving and are not geared toward question-and-answer events. This critical exchange may benefit from ongoing analysis and reformulation.

Investigating the effect of nurse-team communication on nurse turnover: relationships among communication processes, identification, and intent to leave.

Enhanced team communication may strengthen nurses' attachment to their organizations and teams and improve nurse retention. This study examines the relationships among nurse-team communication, identification (organizational and team), and intent to leave. Hospital nurses (N = 201) completed surveys measuring 3 nurse-team communication processes: promoting team synergy, ensuring quality decisions, and individualizing communication. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that promoting team synergy was a significant predictor of intent to leave, whereas ensuring quality decisions and individualizing communication did not account for significant additional variance in intent to leave. Separate analyses showed that the relationship between promoting team synergy and intent to leave was partially mediated by team identification or by organizational identification. Further analyses were conducted on the 7 communication practices for promoting team synergy. Mentoring emerged as the only significant predictor of intent to leave; however, its relationship to intent to leave was fully mediated by organizational identification or partially mediated by team identification. Pragmatic suggestions are offered to improve nurse identification and reduce turnover.

Communicating in the "gray zone": perceptions about emergency physician hospitalist handoffs and patient safety.

OBJECTIVES: To identify the perceptions of emergency physicians (EPs) and hospitalists regarding interservice handoff communication as patients are transferred from the emergency department to the inpatient setting. METHODS: Investigators conducted individual interviews with 12 physicians (six EPs and six hospitalists). Data evaluation consisted of using the steps of constant comparative, thematic analysis. RESULTS: Physicians perceived handoff communication as a gray zone characterized by ambiguity about patients' conditions and treatment. Two major themes emerged regarding the handoff gray zone. The first theme, poor communication practices and conflicting communication expectations, presented barriers that exacerbated physicians' information ambiguity. Specifically, handoffs consisting of insufficient information, incomplete data, omissions, and faulty information flow exacerbated gray zone problems and may negatively affect patient outcomes. EPs and hospitalists had different expectations about handoffs, and those expectations influenced their interactions in ways that may result in communication breakdowns. The second theme illustrated how poor handoff communication contributes to boarding-related patient safety threats for boarders and emergency department patients alike. Those interviewed talked about the systemic failures that lead to patient boarding and how poor handoffs exacerbated system flaws. CONCLUSIONS: Handoffs between EPs and hospitalists both reflect and contribute to the ambiguity inherent in emergency medicine. Poor handoffs, consisting of faulty communication behaviors and conflicting expectations for information, contribute to patient boarding conditions that can pose safety threats. Pragmatic conclusions are drawn regarding physician-physician communication in patient transfers, and recommendations are offered for medical education.

Collaboration, credibility, compassion, and coordination: professional nurse communication skill sets in health care team interactions.

This study explored how nurses communicate professionalism in interactions with members of their health care teams. Extant research show that effective team communication is a vital aspect of a positive nursing practice environment, a setting that has been linked to enhanced patient outcomes. Although communication principles are emphasized in nursing education as an important component of professional nursing practice, actual nurse interaction skills in team-based health care delivery remain understudied. Qualitative analysis of interview transcripts with 50 participants at a large tertiary hospital revealed four communicative skill sets exemplified by nursing professionals: collaboration, credibility, compassion, and coordination. Study findings highlight specific communicative behaviors associated with each skill set that exemplify nurse professionalism to members of health care teams. Theoretical and pragmatic conclusions are drawn regarding the communicative responsibilities of professional nurses in health care teams. Specific interaction techniques that nurses could use in nurse-team communication are then offered for use in baccalaureate curriculum and organizational in-service education.

Communicating professional identity in medical socialization: considering the ideological discourse of morning report.

In this study, the authors investigate how medical ideology and physician professional identity are socially constructed during morning report, a formal teaching conference considered to be a cornerstone of medical education. Analysis of transcripts from 20 meetings reveals physician identity is developed through ideological discourse that produces and reproduces systems of domination that privilege scientific medicine and marginalize humanistic approaches. Findings indicate how, in a socialization context uniquely focused on discourse, communication functions to construct a professional identity grounded in the principles of the biomedical model. Although medical residents deviate from traditional ideology by articulating the voice of the lifeworld, faculty physicians counter these moves by asserting the voice of medicine. The authors draw conclusions regarding identity formation and the socialization practices of medical education.

Predicting nurses' organizational and professional identification: the effect of nursing roles, professional autonomy, and supportive communication.

Recruiting and retaining qualified nursing staff is of growing importance to today's hospital and nurse leaders. Findings from a survey completed by 190 RNs at a major teaching hospital revealed that nursing roles, professional autonomy, and supportive communication were differentially related to the nurses' organizational and professional identification. Professional autonomy was by far the strongest predictor of nurse identification, followed by manager and co-worker support. Co-worker support and traditional nursing roles predicted nurse professional identification, but neither traditional nor collaborative roles predicted nurses' identification with their organization. Communication strategies intended to help executives retain qualified nursing staff are presented.

On the front lines of managed care: professional changes and communicative dilemmas of hospital nurses.

This article explores how the role of the hospital nurse has been transformed by managed care, with a concentration on changes relevant to communicative relationships and processes. Two brief case analyses are considered to examine how hospital nurses have felt the impact of being on the "front lines" of managed care. Findings illustrate the utility of a communication perspective in understanding changes in nursing at individual, organizational, and system levels.

Communication. Improving RNs' organizational and professional identification in managed care hospitals.

Nurse administrators are searching for an expanded repertoire of strategies to attract and retain qualified nursing staff in today's managed care environment. This study examined hospital registered nurses' interpretations of managed care and the effects of those views on nurses' identification with their employing organization and the nursing profession. Findings show that nurses held greater identification with their occupation than their organization. Significant factors influencing nurses' attachment to both of these reference groups included uncertainty about managed care changes, information received about managed care changes, and effects of managed care on the nursing role. Communication principles and strategies are presented to nurse leaders for use in fostering a stronger organizational affiliation among staff nurses while maintaining a strong identification with the nursing profession.