HSA501 Week 4 Discussion

"Team Dynamics and Effective Organizational Communication in Health Care, and Cultural Competence in Health Care" Please respond to the following:

• From the first e-Activity, suggest the major reasons why a well-integrated communication process is important for the performance of any organization and the major reasons why such a process is particularly important in health care organizations. Support your response with at least (2) examples of communication methods used within the researched health care facility in your community.

A well-integrated communication process is important for the performance of any organization because most organizations have many departments and many employees. It is important for all employees of an organization to know and understand the company’s mission statement, so they are able to carry it out and further it. A good communication process is especially important to a healthcare organization because so many different departments and people work with each patient. Orders, medications, diagnosis have to understand and shared between all parties who work with the patient. One party or team does not want to do something or prescribe a therapy or medication that would exacerbate a condition that a patient has, just because they have not been told about it. An example would be if a patient has a medication allergy. Obviously, if this information is not contained in their chart, someone could accidently prescribe this medication.

The healthcare organization that I work at uses an email newspaper to send out updates that are mainly informational, like employee birth announcements or employee promotions. They also use email to inform us of important stuff like system outages and benefit information. It is really the easiest and most efficient way to reach thousands of employees in a short time (Krantz, 2015).

Krantz, D. (2015, July 24). 5 Ways to Effectively Communicate With Employees. Retrieved July 18, 2018, from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/248757

• From the second e-Activity, explore the concept of “cultural competence”, and justify its necessity as a permanent structure of the U.S. health care system. Support your response with at least (2) examples of the possible adverse effects on a health care facility of not practicing cultural competence.

The growing diversity of the country produces occasions and tests for health care organizations, health care practitioners, and politicians to generate and distribute culturally competent services. Cultural competence is defined as the capacity of suppliers and associations to successfully distribute health care services that meet the linguistic, cultural and social needs of patients. A culturally competent health care enterprise can facilitate enhanced quality of care and health results, and can help alleviate ethnic and racial health inequalities. Illustrations of ideas to shift the health care organization in the direction of these objectives consist of offering pertinent training on cultural competence and cross-cultural subjects to health professionals and introducing policies that lessen clerical and linguistic obstructions to patient care.

One example of an adverse effect of a health care facility not practicing cultural competence, would be if a patient came in speaking no English and could not be understood to find out what their symptoms were. Another would be if personnel were unable to ascertain what medications the patient currently was taking.

Georgetown University (2004, February 5). Cultural Competence in Health Care: Is it important for people with chronic conditions? Retrieved July 19, 2018, from https://hpi.georgetown.edu/agingsociety/pubhtml/cu…

Respond to:

Mylynda Schaeffer