Training for Paediatricians and Paediatric Students

In pediatric units, different kinds of health care staff interact. Staff groups working with children and young people include, for example, lay members, receptionists, administrative, caterers, domestics, transport, porters, community pharmacist counter staff and maintenance staff, optometrists, dentists and pharmacists, as well as volunteers across health care settings and service provision.
Critically ill patients and their families can feel overwhelmed with the stress of the environment in addition to the acute illness both in hospital and residentially. This stress affects the patients' and families' ability to function, cope, and understand complex information. For some families, this experience precipitates distrustful relationships with care providers. The resulting impact on quality of care, staff morale, length of stay, and cost may be high.
This module has the intent to present the most important aspects involved in communicating with other health care staff in pediatrics: channels, styles, barriers.
Care staff must learn professional communication techniques to create a better health care environment.
In communicating with others, the health care staff needs to be able to use a variety of strategies to ensure that professional practice meets health and social care needs and facilitates a positive working relationship.
There are different styles of communication and barriers that need to be taken in consideration whilst discussing on communication with other health care staff. Some of those themes are: personal values and expectations, personality differences, hierarchy, culture and ethnicity, generational differences, gender, historical interprofessional and intraprofessional rivalries, differences in schedules and professional routines, differences in accountability, payment, and rewards. Leadership clarity is associated with clear team objectives, high levels of participations, commitment to excellence, and support for innovation. Encouraging and enhancing positive communication between staff is the key to building effective teamwork, minimising poor communication and avoiding conflict. This can be achieved through the development of open, honest and supportive team communication. Policies and procedures that are consistently implemented are also central to supporting communication, avoiding conflict and solving problems. Clear policies and procedures for team communication, handling complaints and grievances, professional development, performance appraisal, and occupational health and safety will provide clear guidance and support to staff on service commitments and expectations in these areas. Successful time management will ultimately have an impact on service delivery and patient care, which is why it is now considered such a key skill in medicine. It is important to gain an adequate self-awareness, the ability to accurately recognize emotions, thoughts, and values and how they influence behaviour. This kind of ability also involves the accurate assessment of one’s own strengths and limitations, with a well-grounded sense of confidence, optimism, and a “growth mindset.”
Relationship skills are fundamental in order to create an adequate working environment: the ability to establish and maintain healthy and rewarding relationships with diverse individuals and groups and to communicate clearly, listen well, cooperate with others, resist inappropriate social pressure, negotiate conflict constructively, humour and seek and offer help when needed. Collaboration in health care is defined as health care professionals assuming complementary roles and cooperatively working together, sharing responsibility for problem-solving and making decisions to formulate and carry out plans for patient care. Collaboration between physicians, nurses, and other health care professionals increases team members’ awareness of each others’ type of knowledge and skills, leading to continued improvement in decision making.
In the pediatric care context, rapid and responsible decision making becomes really important. This skill involves the ability to make constructive choices about personal behaviour and social interactions, based on ethical standards, safety concerns, and social norms.
Structured communication techniques can serve the same purpose that clinical practice guidelines do in assisting practitioners to make decisions and take action.