Introduction
Good internal communication is a keystone of good team dynamics and quality patient care in the healthcare industry. The impact of how teams share information, collaborate, and help one another is directly related to outcomes, regardless of whether the healthcare professional is a doctor, nurse, or healthcare technology professional. PERMA–Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment can be considered one of the potent frameworks by which to improve internal communication and build healthier relationships within a healthcare environment. This article will explain the benefits that PERMA in healthcare communication bring how doctors, nurses, and technological professionals can use it on a daily basis.
Why Internal Communication Matters in Healthcare
Healthcare settings can be stressful and at a hectic pace with high stakes. Doctors and nurses are balancing between their patients, and healthcare technology professionals (developers, designers, and product managers) are crafting tools that will automate procedures. Errors, burnout, and lower patient satisfaction can be a result of miscommunication or poor team dynamics. Powerful internal communication, in turn, increases the sense of trust, better collaboration, and a more positive working environment.
Positive psychology model The PERMA model is a framework that was developed by psychologist Martin Seligman and emphasizes five aspects of, or elements of well-being: Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment. With the help of PERMA, healthcare teams can even enhance the manner in which they relate, communicate, and collaborate, which, in turn, results in positive changes to both employees and patients.
Applying PERMA to Healthcare Teams
We will consider one by one the extent to which certain components of PERMA in healthcare communication are incorporated can become much more effective in the workplace, and some tips on what doctors, nurses, and technology specialists should pay attention to when practicing their profession may also be useful.
1. Positive Emotion: Creating a Supportive Environment
Good moods such as gratitude, joy, and hope have the potential to change the situation in the workplace. Positivity helps in fostering the morale of a team and communication in areas such as healthcare, where stresses occur commonly. To be more specific, a nurse who receives a sense of belonging will find it easier to report important patient information clearly, and a developer who feels appreciated will be more willing to cooperate with clinicians to develop a new app.
Actionable Insight: Initiate a meeting in your team with a fast round of gratitude, where every teammate talks about something that he/she like in the work of a colleague. To technology professionals, make it clear that you recognize a designer with their user-friendly interface or a developer who has fixed a bug. In the case of doctors and nurses, acknowledge the fast thinking of a colleague in a critical case. Such a small routine can generate trust and bring open communication.
An example would be a study conducted by West et al. (2014), which revealed that positive moods among healthcare teams are associated with improved teamwork and lower rates of professionals experiencing burnout, which supports the necessity to create positive moods within stressful settings.
2. Engagement: Staying Focused and Present
Engagement refers to the immersion of oneself in activities, and it is vital in healthcare. Handoffs are associated with increased errors when doctors and nurses are not engaged, but when engaged, they will listen throughout handoffs. In the same way, employees engaged in technology produce superior tools such as intuitive electronic health record (EHR) systems, as they are aimed at satisfying users.
Actionable Insight: Put an emphasis on times of concentration in the context of change or project sprints. To the doctor and nurses, this may involve putting aside undistracted time to chart their patients or hold a team huddle to plan patient care. When it comes to tech professionals, take some time and study how clinicians do their work before commencing on how to design a solution. Involvement enhances communication because all of them are on the same platform.
Example: Team huddles in Cleveland Clinic encourage their staff to communicate and interact more efficiently; all staff members focus on the same purpose of patient care (https://my.clevelandclinic.org/).
3. Relationships: Building Trust and Collaboration
A good relationship is core to efficient use of internal communication. The trust between doctors, nurses, and tech professionals in the healthcare industry guarantees effective collaboration. To illustrate, in the event that a nurse believes in the leadership of a doctor, they will tend to raise concerns openly. In the same way, when a product manager believes that a developer can provide good expertise, it is easier to achieve a shared vision on a healthcare app.
Actionable Insight: Plan team cross-functional workshops to get doctors, nurses, and technology teams to work on a project, such as a new patient portal design. Such workshops achieve the purpose of breaking silos and developing mutual respect and communication. As an illustration, a designer may be made aware of the pressing issues that a nurse faces in the real world, and be able to design a more viable interface.
Research Support: Laschinger et al. (2016) revealed that communication and patient safety results are enhanced by trust-based relationships within healthcare teams to underline the importance of interpersonal connections.
4. Meaning: Connecting Work to a Larger Purpose
There is a purpose in what medical workers do; it is saving lives, changing health, or developing tools to make the care process more effective. Communication will get better when the teams can relate their everyday work to this broader mission as everyone comprehends the reason in their working process. As an example, a developer can be more eager to resolve an issue in an EHR system if they understand how it assists nurses to deliver better care.
Practical Wisdom: Use tasks to relate the patient outcomes at the group meetings. In the case of doctors and nurses, explain how effective communication during shift changes could remove the risk of situations in which lives are lost due to a lack of understanding. In the case of tech professionals, demonstrate how their telehealth platform activities make patients access care. This mutual perspective of meaning promotes group interaction with intention and clarity.
5. Accomplishment: Celebrating Wins Together
Appreciation of the smallest or largest success makes one feel good and strengthens the team spirit. In healthcare, any success, such as a successful surgery, a popular new application, or an immediate response of a nurse to an emergency, needs to be celebrated to encourage cooperation and foster further communication.
What to Do: Develop a “wins board” (and have teams record on it) of what they do (put in a new process, or an introduction of a new feature, etc.). Make everyone, doctors, nurses, developers, and designers, share their contribution. A culture of appreciation emerges when reviewing such wins regularly and encourages teams to continue talking effectively.
Conclusion
Internal communication in healthcare organizations is not just communication of information; it is about relationship building, trust, and the creation of a sense of common purpose. This can easily be done using the PERMA framework, which consists of positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. PERMA framework can be implemented by any doctor, nurse, developer, or product manager to develop a stronger team and enhance communication. Begin small, such as gratitude rounds or focus blocks, and see how the small steps improve and make your workplace a more cooperative and amicable place.
References
- West, C. P., Dyrbye, L. N., & Shanafelt, T. D. (2014). Physician burnout: Contributors, consequences, and solutions. Journal of Internal Medicine, 283(6), 516–529.
- Laschinger, H. K. S., Wong, C. A., & Grau, A. L. (2016). Authentic leadership, empowerment, and burnout: A multiple mediation model. Journal of Nursing Management, 24(2), 156–165.