Improving Practice through Communication

Enhancing and modeling effective communication skills are keys to improving healthcare practice in any country. The primary objective of our experience at the Angkor Hospital for Children (AHC) in Cambodia was to increase the teaching capacity of healthcare professionals including nurses, physicians, pharmacists, and physical therapists. Mentoring, clinical teaching strategies and evaluation, and developing effective presentations were among the topics covered utilizing an interprofessional approach. Communicating complex topics with a diverse group of providers, all with varying language skills presented a unique challenge to the basic education tenet of knowing your learners. The key strategies to enhance communication between all groups included preparation before arrival, openness to learning within the AHC environment, and maintaining flexibility during the teaching sessions.

Close consultation with a provider already familiar with AHC and knowledge of staff communication abilities was helpful prior to the visit and provided the foundation for a partnership. Our AHC partners facilitated our understanding of the unique needs by arranging observation experiences in several clinical areas. This provided us with current, relevant examples from the AHC context to incorporate into the teaching sessions as a group and with individual providers. Teaching sessions incorporated these exemplar situations to promote communication among the staff. This session of the symposium will describe these experiences in detail, identifying lapses in communication and what recommendations were made to improve practice. Specifically, enhancing communication during teaching rounds with providers and modeling effective communication with pharmaceutical manufacturers and Ministry of Health officials will be discussed in relation to development of AHC staff teaching capacity.