Dr. Christopher Johnson recently authored an article about the Dangerous Game of Telephone in Hospitals. In the article, he describes his experience as an attending physician where hospital staff tends to adopt a passive voice and third person sentence construction when discussing any decisions doctors, nurses, and other staff members make about a patient's care.
This habit only adds to the confusion that's already engrained in busy hospital teams where members are going on and off shift at different times, or begin caring for a patient they haven't seen yet but who other members of their care teams have been working with. Dr. Johnson says that in the ICU, discussion of patient case details often turns into a game of telephone where each time the information is relayed, another detail is left out, or false information is added, until the entire narrative is far from the truth.
But hospital teams aren't the only ones who struggle with this issue. What about handoffs between healthcare entities like EMS? What about the confusion and miscommunication that ensues during inter-facility transfers?
We need to focus on the patient AND the ENTIRE healthcare team. We need a regional healthcare communication network that yields truly connected teams.