UMMS Affiliation
Meyers Primary Care Institute; School of Medicine
Publication Date
2020-12-01
Document Type
Article
Disciplines
Health Communication | Health Services Administration | Health Services Research | Patient Safety
Abstract
Communication breakdowns among clinicians, patients, and family members can lead to medical errors, yet effective communication may prevent such mistakes. This investigation examined patients' and family members' experiences where they believed communication failures contributed to medical errors or where effective communication prevented a medical error ("close calls"). The study conducted a thematic analysis of open-ended responses to an online survey of patients' and family members' past experiences with medical errors or close calls. Of the 93 respondents, 56 (60%) provided stories of medical errors, and the remaining described close calls. Two predominant themes emerged in medical error stories that were attributed to health care providers-information inadequacy (eg, delayed, inaccurate) and not listening to or being dismissive of a patient's or family member's concerns. In stories of close calls, a patient's or family member's proactive communication (eg, being assertive, persistent) most often "saved the day." The findings highlight the importance of encouraging active patient/family involvement in a patient's medical care to prevent errors and of improving systems to provide meaningful information in a timely manner.
Keywords
patient activation, patient engagement, patient safety, physician-patient communication, physician-patient relations
Rights and Permissions
Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
DOI of Published Version
10.1177/2374373520925270
Source
Street RL Jr, Petrocelli JV, Amroze A, Bergelt C, Murphy M, Wieting JM, Mazor KM. How Communication "Failed" or "Saved the Day": Counterfactual Accounts of Medical Errors. J Patient Exp. 2020 Dec;7(6):1247-1254. doi: 10.1177/2374373520925270. Epub 2020 May 26. PMID: 33457572; PMCID: PMC7786716. Link to article on publisher's site
Journal/Book/Conference Title
Journal of patient experience
Related Resources
PubMed ID
33457572
Repository Citation
Street RL, Petrocelli JV, Amroze A, Bergelt C, Murphy M, Wieting JM, Mazor KM. (2020). How Communication "Failed" or "Saved the Day": Counterfactual Accounts of Medical Errors. Open Access Publications by UMMS Authors. https://doi.org/10.1177/2374373520925270. Retrieved from https://escholarship.umassmed.edu/oapubs/4509
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Included in
Health Communication Commons, Health Services Administration Commons, Health Services Research Commons, Patient Safety Commons