When I first started this blog, I mentioned that I sometimes notice examples of poor communication that aren't just annoying but actively dangerous. Here's an interesting example: a relative of mine was recently given a course of radiotherapy, and was given the timetable I've inserted below.
The last appointment, for some reason, is in black text on a dark purple background that could be quite hard to read and perhaps mistaken for a border and so missed altogether. My relative pointed this out to the nurse, who mentioned that several other people had indeed missed their final radiotherapy sessions (and so, presumably, received an incomplete or delayed dose) as a result of it.
I think we can forgive the initial mistake, but not the failure to fix it once its consequences became clear. The fact that the nurse did nothing to make it more readable makes this report all the more believable. It seems the NHS has some serious problems with communication; unlike with HMRC and other public bodies, the risks are not just to people's time and patience but to their health and lives.
'Poor communication' is very often a political euphemism for a controversial policy poorly implemented, as the NHS recently found with the Liverpool Care Pathway. Here, the ideal scenario would be a sensitive two-way consultation on a complex set of difficult decisions. If this consultation was an intrinsic part of the policy, then the policy failed, even if everything else about the policy was designed and implemented correctly.
Reading those stories, I was reminded of Charles Clarke's claim after the last general election that Labour lost because they'd failed to communicate their message well enough. It apparently hadn't occurred to him that — with the millions spent on press officers, special advisers and widespread advertising — the message had been communicated perfectly well, and that perhaps the real problem was a set of unappealing policies dreamt up by unappealing politicians. (Before I'm accused of any bias, it's worth pointing out that all other parties also lost the last general election, and no doubt for similar reasons but while deploying similar excuses.)
In the case of the LCP, relatives felt the NHS Trusts had failed to consult them properly; in my relative's case, the NHS was similarly inconsiderate in its communications with patients. In each case we can see the potential for slapdash communication — nothing more than the classic failure to fully consider the needs of the person at the receiving end — to cause serious suffering at crucial moments.
I once joked to a paediatrician friend that "if you make a mistake at work children die, but if I make a mistake at work the comma's in the wrong place". I must admit that I hadn't really considered the possibility of children dying because of doctors' inability to put the comma in the right place.
I think we can forgive the initial mistake, but not the failure to fix it once its consequences became clear. The fact that the nurse did nothing to make it more readable makes this report all the more believable. It seems the NHS has some serious problems with communication; unlike with HMRC and other public bodies, the risks are not just to people's time and patience but to their health and lives.
'Poor communication' is very often a political euphemism for a controversial policy poorly implemented, as the NHS recently found with the Liverpool Care Pathway. Here, the ideal scenario would be a sensitive two-way consultation on a complex set of difficult decisions. If this consultation was an intrinsic part of the policy, then the policy failed, even if everything else about the policy was designed and implemented correctly.
Reading those stories, I was reminded of Charles Clarke's claim after the last general election that Labour lost because they'd failed to communicate their message well enough. It apparently hadn't occurred to him that — with the millions spent on press officers, special advisers and widespread advertising — the message had been communicated perfectly well, and that perhaps the real problem was a set of unappealing policies dreamt up by unappealing politicians. (Before I'm accused of any bias, it's worth pointing out that all other parties also lost the last general election, and no doubt for similar reasons but while deploying similar excuses.)
In the case of the LCP, relatives felt the NHS Trusts had failed to consult them properly; in my relative's case, the NHS was similarly inconsiderate in its communications with patients. In each case we can see the potential for slapdash communication — nothing more than the classic failure to fully consider the needs of the person at the receiving end — to cause serious suffering at crucial moments.
I once joked to a paediatrician friend that "if you make a mistake at work children die, but if I make a mistake at work the comma's in the wrong place". I must admit that I hadn't really considered the possibility of children dying because of doctors' inability to put the comma in the right place.
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