Miscommunication In Nursing

The constantly changing environment of our healthcare system requires a continuous need for further education, new equipment, new computer systems, and different methods of caring for patients. With all the new technological advances, there are bound to be glitches along the way. In the case study of Ms. Kainer and Ms. Kain, it is highlighted how easy mistakes can happen and how they can potentially harm the patient. For these reasons, most facilities have policies and procedures in place to help prevent errors from occurring. The case study of Ms. Kainer and Ms. Kain shows the serious repercussions that can occur with miscommunication and lack of thorough patient identification. The initial call from the nurse in the physician’s office displays both of these. The nurse calling in the ordered procedure as well as the nurse who was scheduling it both failed to verify both the patient’s name and date of birth along with any other pertinent patient information or identifiers, such as social security number, insurance, symptoms, etc. The lack of communication …show more content…
The 5 rights primarily pertain to medication administration, but the components can carry over to any aspect of care. They include the right patient, the right medication, the right route, the right dose, and the right time. Other elements can be added to include the right procedure, the right lab work, etc. Nurses and other staff can become too comfortable in their day to day environments and fail to verify the essential components each time. The majority of healthcare facilities have some type of policy in place requiring their staff to use two unique patient identifiers such as name, date of birth or medical record number (Freeman). These are to be used with any treatment or procedure to verify the correct patient