Effective communication in social care: how can Radar Healthcare help?

What is meant by effective communication in social care?

Effective communication in social care is essential for the safety of workers, residents, and their relatives. Care workers need to prioritise communication between all parties to correctly fulfil responsibilities, reduce risks, and support safe care.

The Institute for Healthcare Communication has found that regardless of a carer’s knowledge or experience, if they are not able to show effective communication with people, they will not be able to meet their role properly.

The ability to effectively communicate with residents, co-workers and family members is one of the best ways social care providers can improve their services and, in turn, their regulatory ratings. Read on to discover the importance of communication and how advanced software like Radar Healthcare can help promote communication and collaboration throughout an organisation.

The impact of effective communication in social care

There are six main areas of communication; listening, verbal, non-verbal, questioning, written, and recording. Care providers need to ensure that their workers understand how those six key areas can deliver safe and effective care.

• Improving people’s health

According to the USA’s Institute for Healthcare Communication, effective communication skills can also help you to create better health outcomes for your patients, by encouraging them to engage with their treatment and take a more serious interest in managing their condition.

• Helping boost CQC ratings

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) uses quality statements to assess the quality of a service delivered by a healthcare organisation, all of which recommend evidencing good communication skills and practices.

• Saving care organisations money

Several studies have shown that miscommunication between co-workers and healthcare practitioners can lead to errors, such as ordering the wrong prescriptions, creating additional and preventable expenses.

• Enhancing the quality of the service provided

Effective communication can help make residents feel valued and at ease. It not only improves care services but also builds a better working environment for care professionals, encouraging teamwork and collaboration.

How can software support care organisations to improve communication?

The key to an open culture in a business is effective communication, and the care industry is no different.

Many care organisations are made up of various teams, who work across different systems, making it difficult to map across improvements, track data, and stay up to date on processes, leaving room for miscommunication and errors. Therefore, learning and improvements need to be shared between care professionals of all types, using a single interoperable system.

Our regulatory compliance software helps care services embed an open culture by allowing teams to learn and work collaboratively, helping them to improve safety, outcomes, and experience – and not to mention improve CQC ratings.

Centralising all compliance data provides organisations with one source of truth for all quality and compliance policies, supporting process standardisation, as well as giving complete visibility of what is happening at all levels.

As mentioned earlier, communication between residents and carers is just as important, that’s why Radar Healthcare’s software encourages services to value their residents’ opinions by collecting feedback to drive improvements.

We support our partners to create better communication between co-workers, healthcare professionals, regulators, residents, and relatives through a range of our modules, including incident and event management, document management, improvement and action plans, audits, analytics, and more.

Want to find out more about how Radar Healthcare can help your care organisation? Speak to our expert team today!