Assessing communication between health professionals, children and families

Abstract

A great deal of work has been done worldwide addressing the rights of the child and their families to ensure they are involved in the decision-making processes of the management of the child’s health. Of equal importance is the need for all parties to be fully informed about the treatment strategies and plan of care. For an organization to be certain, effective communication does occur between the staff, the children and their families; systems, policies, and practices need to be in place and adhered to. International organizations with interests in child health, including CAI, WHO and UNICEF, have collaborated to set up the Child Friendly Healthcare Initiative (CFHI) (Southall et al, 2000; Nicholson and Clarke, 2007). The CFHI has developed 12 standards that have universal applicability across child health-care services. These standards focus on different aspects of child and family-friendly approaches to the delivery of health services. At our children’s hospital we aimed to gain an understanding of the level of communication that existed to enable us to develop recommendations for improvement. An overall assessment of communication within the hospital using CFHI–Standard 5 (parents and children will be kept fully informed and involved in all decisions affecting their care) was utilized. The assessment highlighted there is a satisfactory level of communication practices in place, however, the process has enabled the gathering of information to develop intervention strategies to further improve communication for parents and children.