Communication strategies:
According to Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia (2018) standard 2, it is the responsibility of a registered nurse to engage in professional relationships such as collaborating with other professionals for improved health outcomes and communicating with the professionals, patients and the families of the patients with respect and dignity. Therefore, communicating with the medical officer, Michael, retrieval team and community is important for improving the health condition of Michael. It is important to clearly communicate with Michael and his wife, using appropriate words and culturally respectful language as Michael belongs to an Indigenous community. According to Kerrigan et al. (2021), communicating with Indigenous patients and their families is often perceived as a hurdle or barrier for nurses during the provision of healthcare services, as Indigenous Australians are non-English speakers. This can be done with the assistance of Indigenous health workers at the centre, who can help me in communicating with Michael and his wife. Moreover, Michael and his wife will be actively listened to, and their queries related to Michael's health plan will be responded to. Patient education and delivering information related to the care plan of the patient to the patient and family members, is an important communication strategy in nursing (Bucknall et al., 2020). Therefore, Michael and his wife will be informed about shifting Michael to the hospital with the help of the retrieval team and their consent will be obtained to shift the patient to the emergency department of the hospital.
Moreover, Michale’s wife will be informed about the current medications (antibiotics and painkillers) administered to Michael along with additional oxygen supply. For the wider community, it will be ensured to maintain respectful communication with them while considering their cultural beliefs. The communication with the medical officer and retrieval team will be done via phone call, to update them about the health condition of Michael. Another communication strategy that can be used to handover clinical information about the patient to other professionals, will be to use the ISBAR template, as according to Krisnawati et al. (2023), it assists in information handover and delivers information in a structured, clear and concise way.
Challenges to the delivery of care:
According to the case study, Michale’s wife works as a part-time administrator at the healthcare centre, also she communicates with the nurse regularly in a professional and a non-professional context. Provisioning care to a person who is a family member of a colleague, might lead to difficulty in maintaining professional boundaries with Michael and his wife. This is because Michael’s wife has an empathetic relationship with the nurse, which can impact decision-making in the case of Michael and can lead to biases and favouritism, which might blur the professional boundaries with the patient or with his wife as a worker. Moreover, the confidentiality of the patient can also be compromised, as his wife is a worker at the centre, and sharing Michael’s personal information for improving his health or obtaining personal information from Michael as a nurse can impact his privacy and confidentiality as his wife is a worker at the centre. This is against the nursing standards and practices to disrupt the confidentiality of the patients (Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia, 2018). Therefore, these challenges can impact the delivery of care to the patient.
