health communication: investigation on health Professional’s communication skills in sierra leone"

Abstract

In health care delivery, the use of communication is essential for both health professionals and patients. Communication serves as a vital tool for bridging relationships between people. In the clinical setting, the implementation of biomedical skills by health professionals begins with communication. Effective communication between health professionals and their patient help improve the health care delivery system. This study, therefore, looks at the therapeutic communication of the health professionals in Sierra Leone in the clinical settings. The health system in Sierra Leone is challenged heavily, from the provision of technical skills to that of communication skills of the health professionals. However, the health ministry and its partners have always paid attention to biomedical skills and neglected the communication skills of the health professionals. The study focuses on four areas of therapeutic communication of health professionals in Sierra Leone, their informative and communication skills, empathic feelings, respect, and social skills. This current study employs a quantitative research design of survey instrument and data were collected from N=519 health professionals (medical doctors, nurses, midwives and community health officers) from 16 government hospitals across the country. The instrument for data collection was adopted from Leal-Costa et.al who developed the ‘Health Professionals Communication Skills Scale – HP-CSS’ in 2016. The result showed how demographic of HP is linked to their communication and social skills, empathy and respect and authenticity. The study revealed that nurses and younger health professionals were more effective in communicating with their patients. The role of the hospital management was another key result that came out, hence effective hospital management can influence health professional’s communication, social skills, empathy and respect for effective health care delivery. Therefore, for better health care delivery we need to have effective hospital management, and regular checks on how health professionals handle their communication and social skills with their patients.