Professional Communication
Examples of written communication
- SBAR
- SOAP Note
- Journal club
- poster
- slides
- handouts
- CV
Examples of verbal communication
- Presentation
- conference
- rounds
- counseling
- telephone communication
- teaching
Consider
- audience, format, length, and tone
Emails
- An unprofessional may:
- damage the credibility of the sender
- induce negative feelings
- A negative impression may decrease student opportunity
Communicating to improve patient safety
- Harmful incidents: incident that reaches patient and results in actual patient harm
- No Harm incidents: reaches a patient but does not cause any observable or measurable harm
- Near miss: Incident that may have caused harm but DID NOT reach the patient
What is SBAR Documentation?
- Structure communication has been identified as an important tool to enhance quality and improve patient safety
- SBAR is a type of structured, written communication
- Situation
- Introduce yourself
- Describe what’s happening
- Focus on objective details
- Try to avoid emotional, feeling-based emphasis
- conclude with status update
- Background
- identify and provide details related to S in a SOAP NOTE
- prepare ahead of time to increase efficiency
- Assessment
- interpret situation and background
- use clinical judgement
- rely on evidence-based practices and clinical experiences
- starting point for further discussion
- Recommendation
- Organized, systemic plan
- Clear and prioritized
- Include explanations
- structure as
- actions required
- Urgency
- Next steps
- Benefits of SBAR
- improves patient outcomes
- enhance interprofessional collaboration
- support patient safety
- Reduces variability
- Enhances efficiency
- Encourages consistency and promptness