Improving Patient-Centered Care: The Role of Active Listening in Healthcare Communication

Introduction

It is evident that through effective and Therapeutic communication, patient-directed care as well as patient-catered care, will be 100 percent implemented in the healthcare facilities or in aftercare centers such as homes. Therefore, healthcare professionals such as nurses and other physicians should ensure that there is active communication between the professionals and the patients (Browning & Waite, 2010). Therefore, this paper will discuss the components of active listening as below in order to understand how effective and efficient patient-directed care and patient-centered care can be implemented.

Attending

The best way to make sure that active listening is evaluated by the health professionals and the patients is by ensuring that there is always an attendance between the health care professionals and the patient. For a professional to be able to offer health care service well to the patient, he/she should be readable and available in order to understand of know the problem of the patient. Nothing less than being in attendance is the patient; for a patient to be able to be treated or to be given direct care, he/she should also be present during the treatment process so that they can come to an understanding with the health care professionals offering patient-centered care or patient-directed care. The patient as able to explain his/her health problem, and the health or medical professionals are able to take notes and advice on the best diagnosis. Therefore, it is considered important that the attendance stage of active listening be maintained and adhered to the latter (Shipley, 2010).

For example, through attendance, the patient is able to meet the medical or healthcare professionals who will, in return, give his diagnosis or even offer health advice to the patient. Hence, the first process of active listening is one of the best ways that such professionals and patients are able to come up with an effective understanding of each other. Therefore, the attending phase of active learning among the patient and health care professional should always be ensured at all times, with reason, easing their communication. Observing

Observation is another important step in the active listening process, and all the stakeholders in the health distribution channel should encourage observation. For the well-being of the active listener, he/she will be able to second his/her information with other data that is obtained via facial recognition or observation. Through observation, there are various important issues or things that both the health care professional offering patient-directed care and patient-centred care will gain advantage of. The health care professionals are given the chance to view the signs and symptoms of the patients; hence, they are able to communicate with or offer feedback to the patient according to the symptoms present as well as give healthcare advice on the diagnosis. Through observation, the physician is able to evaluate the condition of the patient based on other observable indications ever seen in such cases (Bodie, 2012). Thus, it can be deduced that through observation, the professional is able to evaluate the nature of the patient and determine the most effective way to manage his disease or ailment.

Therefore, it can be deduced that poor observation skills among healthcare professionals is a serious issue that can lead to healthcare risks. Hence, for effective and efficient communication between the patient and the health care professional, it is worth adopting these skills or knowledge for a better understanding of patient-centered care as well as patient-directed care. It is important to ensure that health service providers should make sure health professionals are keen on observational skills and knowledge.

Questioning

There are various steps to ensure that healthcare communication is adhered to in the case of patient-directed care and patient-centred care. The ability of a health care professional to be able to question the client efficiently and effectively in order to understand their health conditions or status. In the case of nursing, it is important to understand the nursing skills of questioning so that they could be able to understand the value of health care to patients. With these skills nurses are able to offer either patient-centred or patient-directed care with ease. This is one of the attributes of a good nurse. Healthcare professionals such as nurses should be able to question all the patients to get the deepest needs of the patient. Questioning is the most important concept needed in effective communication. There are various attributes that second questioning as one of the best steps to make sure the quality of health care meets the desired qualifications. For this to be possible, healthcare professionals should adopt better questioning skills to get the right feedback from the patient (Ingram et al., 2011).

It is considered important to evaluate the feelings of the patient, but this can only be obtained from close questioning of the patient. Thus, the nature and understanding of the patient’s needs can only be obtained through effective questioning of the patient. Health or medical professionals must be trained to gain knowledge and understanding of better questing skills and abilities to change the current form of communication among patients and professionals. Paraphrasing and Summarising

Nurses, doctors, and other health care professionals should ensure that they develop a culture of taking patients’ notes and being able to summarize the notes in order to increase the understanding of the information in the notes. It is noted that the health care service is unique from the others because the health status of a patient depends on the various notes about the patient’s health. For this reason, it is worth mentioning that these professionals should be able to summarise patients’ records to ease the reading and analysis of the patient medical status. Thus, the ability of the professionals to summarize the notes will not only help in the communication process but also in the understanding of the patient’s medical report more easily in the case of referrals or other issues (Ingram et al., 2011).

Taking care of the patient’s records by being able to paraphrase the information given by the other doctors is an important step in effective therapeutic and effective communication in patient-directed care and patient-centered care. Therefore, all individuals related to health care services should ensure improved active listening skills in order to push health care to the next level. In the case of a patient approach, the doctor, who in this case could be the listener, should be able to summarize and paraphrase the information from the patient so that he can gather the information needed and provide feedback, such as diagnosis and treatment plans for the patient. Finally, it can be noted that without these two skills, then active listening will be a problem, especially in the healthcare profession (Olukoga, Folayan, Harris & Ajayi, 2010).

Reflection of feeling

Being able to reflect on the information obtained from listening is an important step in making the best decision. Self or personal reflection is known to be the best tool to ensure upright decision is undertaken on all the issues in the world. Therefore, it is important to consider that reflection is an important step in ensuring that all measures are taken to adhere to these facets for better or high-quality service. It is important to reflect on the patient records for some time if the case is not an emergency one. This will help the health/medical professional to be able to offer the best diagnosis or treatment to the patient. To the patient, it will be a good step towards his/her treatment.

Strengths

It’s worth mentioning that I have various strengths in my active listening skills. One of my strengths is being able to summarize and paraphrase information from the patient. With this skill I am able to evaluate the information from the patient with ease and also provide clear and accurate information for medical record purposes. In most cases, other professionals find it easy to contemplate my previous notes, hence enabling me to help the patients more effectively and easily. The other strength that I am competent in is my observation skills. I am able to evaluate observable information about my patients, such as symptoms and the patient’s progress. This has helped me over the years to offer quality healthcare service to my patients

Weaknesses

Contrary to my known strengths, I am not able to execute my questioning and attending skills. Therefore, in order to improve the above skills, I will use the development plan below.

Development Plan

• To evaluate the areas that I have in the above two weaknesses in order to ascertain the areas to develop.
• Take a step to attend active listening training to make sure I am able to back my skills and knowledge and skills
• To improve my understanding of the above weakness, I will execute an experience attachment to allow me to evaluate my understanding of my skills

Conclusion

It is important to understand active listening skills. As in the case of health professionals, it is worth ensuring that these skills are adopted for better patient-directed care and patient-centered care.

References

Olukoga, A., Folayan, M., Harris, G., & Ajayi, O, 2010. An Analysis of Listening Skills of Healthcare Students in Nigeria. West African journal of medicine, 29(2).

Jagosh, J., Donald Boudreau, J., Steinert, Y., MacDonald, M. E., & Ingram, L, 2011. The importance of physician listening from the patients’ perspective: Enhancing diagnosis, healing, and the doctor-patient relationship. Patient education and counseling, 85(3), 369-374.

Bodie, G. D, 2012. Listening is positive communication. The positive side of interpersonal communication, 109-125.

Shipley, S. D, 2010. Listening: A concept analysis. In Nursing forum (Vol. 45, No. 2, pp. 125-134). Blackwell Publishing Inc.

Browning, S., & Waite, R., 2010. The gift of listening: JUST listening strategies. In Nursing forum (Vol. 45, No. 3, pp. 150-158). Blackwell Publishing Inc.

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