Strangers in Crisis: Emergency and Hospital-Based Clinicians

Overview

Strangers in Crisis: Communication for Emergency Department and Hospital-Based Clinicians

Patients who attend at emergency department are in crisis and are met by strangers who in an instant become responsible for their care. In the emergency room they are the emergency department physicians, PAs, nurses, and other health professionals. Time pressures, high information processing needs and the seriousness and complexity of the patient’s health problems contribute to the intensity of the situation. In an effort to better equip clinicians to manage communication challenges in the emergency department and inpatient settings, IHC developed Strangers in Crisis.

The familiarity of the primary care provider and the “doctor’s office” are gone. The newness of the emergency department setting adds to the sense of crisis. Systems are encountered that are foreign to the patient and the family. It is within this setting that communication with patient, family, and other health care workers becomes critical. Bad news may have to be delivered. Tough decisions may have to be made. Time pressures abound. Patients are transferred from one clinician to the next and from service to service. Everyone’s antenna are fully extended, sensitive to the nuances that might convey some meaning, some glimpse of hope or despair. The challenge, then, is to provide clinicians with tools to help them effectively and efficiently establish a relationship with patients and families and communicate in a way that will enhance patient and family satisfaction and reduce complaints while also promoting excellent clinical care.

Duration 1/2 Day, 1 Day
Accreditation Approved for CE
Available To Clinicians, All Healthcare Professionals
Course InformationDownload PDF

Strangers in Crisis is a one day or half-day program for clinicians and health care workers who work in hospital emergency settings. Developed in cooperation with Kaiser Permanente of Northern California, the program is based upon surveys and interviews that were done with hospitalists at Kaiser and emergency department physicians at Duke. The workshop is highly interactive and engages participants in considering communication with multiple systems: patients, families, and other health care team members. Specific communication models are taught and practiced during the workshop.

The nature of shift work in the hospital setting has made it possible to develop the workshop as a full day program. Workshop learners are engaged in several exercises that address communication with multiple systems: patients, families, and other health care workers. Specific communication models are taught and practiced extensively during the workshop.

Learner objectives:

Understand the importance of communication in all health care encounters and specifically in Emergency Department (ED) encounters
Understand the role of communication in outcomes and adherence, as well as increasing patient, family and team satisfaction and reducing complaints in EDs.
Appreciate the unique experiences and challenges of clinicians, patients, and family members in the ED.
Be able to identify specific skills for communicating with patients, families and team members in ED settings
Demonstrate two communication skills to use with patients, families and team members in ED settings

Strangers in Crisis is based on theories and models of communication in three areas:

1) clinician‐patient communication;

2) communication with families of patients; and

3) team communication.

To address clinician‐patient communication, IHC’s 4E Model (Engage, Empathize, Educate and Enlist) has been adapted to the emergency department. Participants will also learn specific strategies for communicating with families in emergency departments, and will learn strategies for addressing clinical hand‐offs and team communication.

The workshop consists of mini‐presentations, interactive exercises, videotaped case studies and skill practice with peers to build participant awareness, knowledge, skills and confidence regarding communication is these settings. Case examples frame realistic issues involving patients, families and teams. The workshop workbook includes an extensive annotated bibliography. At the end of the workshop, learners are asked to commit to trying out one or two new communication strategies and then to evaluate the outcomes associated with these approaches.