Interpersonal skills in medical practice refers to creation of a healthy and prosperous relationship between the doctor and the patient. It has its basis on effective communication and interaction between the doctor and the patient, which helps the patient to cure and feel comfortable to visit the doctor. On the other hand, it helps the doctor to understand the patient and treat them as people with needs and problems rather than people with disease conditions. Excellent interpersonal skills can result in reduced court cases, increased productivity, proper time management, improved care or the patients and development of an excellent reputation for the hospital.
Part 1: Analysis of interpersonal skills used in a healthcare situation.
A case study of a public hospital in Spain between a period of 2010 to 2012, indicated the practical applications of the interpersonal skills by the nurses. The facility has a two-hundred and fifty-bed capacity, which are distributed among its human resources; 15% is under the nurses, 47% under the medical staff and 36% under the management and services staff. The nurses make use of interviews to gather information from their patients who have been admitted in the various wards on their health conditions to keep up to date with their medical progress, which is obtained, from their feedback. The nurses also make use of direct observation to make a valid patient assessment (O'Toole, 2012).
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The skills used by the nurses in the assessment of the needs and the progress of the patients in the wards are essential in making the right choice of treatment to undertake. The skills contribute positively to the enhanced recovery of the patients, as they are free enough to share their information in detail, which help the doctor in diagnosis, counseling, issuing therapeutic instructions, and establishing a caring relationship with patients (Van, 2009). However, these interpersonal skills can be improved to benefit the broader medical practitioner's discipline. For instance, the interrelation skills can be included in the curriculum of all undergraduate medical schools to make the new medical trainees familiar with them to improve the medical field; they can also use interpersonal relation tools to appraise the senior doctors. To advance the medical science, the interpersonal skills can be taught through courses and workshops to be part of the continuous medical education.
Part 2: An experiment to solve an interpersonal skill problem.
An experiment conducted on the nurses while on their jobs view culture as an impediment towards achieving universal healthcare. The experiment was conducted on nurses in public hospitals who serve both the minority and majority communities. The nurses were studied on their mode of conduct while attending to individuals from both the minority and majority communities. While working with diverse populations, the health practitioners view the culture of the patients to be a barrier to their provision of health care service. In the arrangement of diabetes care, the practitioners are aware of the culture of the locals, as well as intercultural communication and select the levels of intensity for social interventions. An example is a disparity in the status of health and the access to care exists between the majority and minority populations in America (Bach, & Grant, 2009). The methods to research the cultural inhibition to seeking medical attention majorly entailed the location of published articles by going through the electronic databases to find the relevant data, and observation of the nurse’s conduct, which were useful in the study of the cultures.
The results show that many members of the community are more likely to have diabetes because of the change in communities, which included reliability on subsidized commodities, which consist of refined flour, cheese, and refined sugar. The nurses encounter the effects of their culture while carrying out their duties, for instance, they perceive the minority communities to be careless and do not practice proper personal hygiene. Also, they perceive the failure of the patient to adhere to the guideline of the doctor, as the patient's problem. Medical practitioners most of the time use verbal frustration on ethnic patients who do not seek regular health care as they believe the minority do not care about their healthcare.
To solve this problem, the management has to come up with the standard code of conduct, which the medical practitioners have to adhere to in their daily routines to maintain a standardized mode of treatment for all patients. The limitations of the design for scientific use include studies that were performed using cross-sectional analysis that only makes descriptions of associations and not the causality. In addition, it is limited to the number of reviews included, which reported each factor that relates to culture as restricting the generalizability of the study. The number of study samples in the experiment does not meet the threshold for representing the entire population. Although the study has limitations, the results of the survey show significant evidence of how cultural practices effect on the nurses. The ability of the nurses to serve the minority groups is affected, as they perceive them as not caring about their health since Medicaid programs do not cover their medical expenses.
Reference
Bach, S., & Grant, A. (2009). Communication and interpersonal skills for nurses . Exeter [England: Learning Matters
O'Toole, G. (2012). Communication: Core Interpersonal Skills for Health Professionals . Churchill Livingstone Australia
Van, S. G. M. (2009). Communication skills for the health care professional: Concepts, practice, and evidence . Sudbury, Mass: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.
