Why is Healthcare Still Playing a Real Life Game of Telephone?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Special thanks to James Laidlaw for writing today's blog post. You can connect with him on LinkedIn. 

Do you remember the Telephone Game you played as a kid? Everybody gets in a circle and the first person whispers a secret to the person sitting next to them, then that person repeats it to the next in line, and so on. At the conclusion, the last person states out loud what was said to her, and everybody laughs as they hear how much the phrase changed from beginning to end with every player hearing a slightly different message. The entire point of the game is miscommunication.

Miscommunication may have its place in games like Telephone, but healthcare communication is no joke. Clear, concise, accurate, and timely communication is essential for effective patient treatment and care coordination. We need the same message to get to the right people regardless of how many players or care complexities are involved. 

Errors in communication play a role in 80% of serious medical errors. Even a slight miscommunication during patient care can result in serious consequences. So when efficient communication is so crucial in patient outcomes, why do we continue to rely on old and archaic methods of information transfer that end up placing us in a real-life game of Telephone? 

Pulsara is a communication platform that connects teams across organizations. This empowers clinicians to deliver better patient care through efficient, real-time communication when seconds and minutes matter, and provides transparency and consistency of message to the entire team.

Our purpose at Pulsara is to improve the lives of patients and caregivers through innovative communication. It's About People.