Mindless Communication

mindless communicationCommunication incident 1

I received a phone call from a nurse stating that she needed to bring her stroke patient down for a ct scan of their head with iv contrast. I asked her if we could get consent for the patient to receive the iv contrast? She was under the impression that we didn't need consent for contrast. I informed her that we did need consent for contraindication purposes. While on the phone with her she yelled to other people in her area if anyone had ever heard of having to get consent for the contrast. I could not hear what they said but, when she began talking to me again she said no one up there had ever heard of that. I proceeded to inform her that the policy for the inpatients consent hadn't been enforced like it should have been in the past but, we were required to make sure that even the inpatients had consent for the contrast. She was very apprehensive about what I was saying and began to tell me I didn't know what I was talking about. I told her that I had been working in my dept. for 10 years and I knew my department. The communication was lost between my department and the other people of the hospital. She was angry that no one had let the rest of the hospital know that this policy was going to be enforced. I apologized for the incompetence of my department and the phone call ended.

Working in a hospital that communication can be a life or death situation there is no room for error. It seems that my department ( Radiology) seems to have had a made an error.

If the other areas in the hospital had gotten a memo on this issue then there wouldn't have been an issue with me. She would have known the policy and it would have been discussed in a mindless manor but, since she was unaware of the policy being enforced she was irritated and defensive. Which in return put me on the spot to defend myself and the knowledge of my own department. The communication that had not happened between my management and other areas of the hospital caused a communication conflict that was unnecessary for both the nurse and myself. Being on the phone and not in person also contributed to the frustration because we could not see each other. I think in a situation like that sometimes being in person is easier to explain a conflicting situation. The interruption of her yelling at the people in her area was also another distraction that could have been avoided if we would have been talking face to face.

Communication incident 2

The front desk calls to let us know a patient is here and is going back to vascular to get prepped for their biopsy. My department is aware the patient is here but, some how vascular never got the phone call and the patient sat out in the lobby for an hour. We received a phone call from the nurse in vascular asking why we didn't call them to let them know the patient was here.