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Communication by @kendonaldson

Good points from this blog by Consultant Kidney doctor. I suspect that it wouldn’t be possible for all admissions & discharges to have a telephone consultation with the patients relative or carer – wonder what it would take to put this idea into action ?

dghealth

“My father was in hospital for 2 weeks and not once did I get to speak to a doctor”

“All it would have taken was a phone call, I kept asking day after day, but no-one bothered”

“We were watching Mum get sicker day by day and we knew she was dying but we couldn’t get anyone to talk to us about it. They kept changing drugs and trying new things but nothing was working. We knew she was going to die”

These are just a few quotes from recent complaints that I have read and demonstrate a very common theme – we are not very good at communication. There are many aspects to our failing in communication; with the patient themselves, between specialist teams or between primary and secondary care but it’s the communication with families and loved ones I wish to focus on in this blog.

To illustrate…

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