Hcs 325 - Effective Communication Paper

HCS/325

Effective Communication Paper

3/10/15

        I currently work for St. Francis Hospital, this is a community based hospital. I work in the EMS Department, as an EMT, and we provided Emergency Medical Services to the citizens of Wilmington, Delaware. My organization uses multiple ways to communicate from a hospital level and a departmental level. In this paper I am going to focus on departmental level.

        Our department share’s information in a multitude of different ways. Some of these ways are in person, some are a little more old-fashioned, and some of these ways include using technology. Some of the ways that the leadership and staff communicate face to face include staff meetings, committees, and “town hall meetings” (these are similar to open discussion forums). Our old-fashion ways of communication include uncoordinated word of mouth, a cork message board and flyers in our work mailboxes. The final forms of communication we use include email and a text message system designed for the hospital called the “Zip-It Program.

        I believe the most effective techniques that we use would be the staff meetings. I have chosen staff meetings as our most effective technique because they are a recently new addition to our department. During staff meetings we receive written information meeting notes, along with verbal discussion and clarification.  Staff meetings allow the leadership and field staff to communicate on a level playing ground. By implementing these staff meetings our leadership understands that this way of interactive communication is the way of the future and has amazing benefits for all colleagues involved (Mulholland, 2013). Before our department started to have consistent staff meetings our attrition rate was about 20 percent. Over the past few months I have noticed an acute drop in our attrition rate and a significant raise in the morale of colleagues in my department.

        Now, that there are always communication techniques that can be improved upon, but I believe that the ones that I will be listing have been found down right ineffective and unsafe for a healthcare work environment. For the longest time our department would post information on a cork message board for everyone to see. There were several problems with this and the first being, the board was not organized and no one person was in charge of it. Information about upcoming events would be placed all over the board and the board was rarely cleaned off, to remove outdated info. Also, colleagues would post personal things on the board, like their child’s fundraiser packets. The corkboard was horrible and I believe more information was lost on that board, than found.