Overcoming Communication Barriers in Health Care

I believe that technology is helping to overcome some of the communication barriers in health care. Technology helps nursing professionals spend less time with paper documentation and more time with patients. As first year nursing students, we are taught that therapeutic communication is one of the most important aspects to learn and practice when we go to our clinical placements in January. Patients feel more confident, trusting, and relaxed when they have hands on care from nursing staff. Computers, personal data devices (PDAs), and electronic medical records are ways that nursing professionals can enter patient information, access valuable resources from the internet and retrieve patient history within seconds, rather than having to search through file cabinets which takes time.