Communications Problems Affecting Patient Care in Hospitals

Abstract

Medical services in large hospitals are organized to make available the most advanced diagnostic and therapeutic techniques for patient treatment; they are not, however, organized to provide opportunities for direct communications among physicians, patients, and nursing staff. Yet the need for such communications increases with continuing technological changes, increasing medical specialization, and complexity of treatments. Organizational Factors.— In the modern hospital, medical care is a complicated process which involves physicians in a heavy schedule of patient rounds, diagnostic conferencss, and consultations with other physicians. In teaching hospitals, particularly, each specialty section is concerned not only with research and the care of patients, but also with training members of the house staff and with teaching and supervising medical students. In effect, medical services in hospitals used for teaching are organized to achieve multiple aims, and the work is accomplished through a complex network of individuals with dissimilar amounts of experience and