Is your equipment helping or hurting patient communication?

Brian Bradfield.With existing scheduling backlogs, radiology technologists are feeling the pressure to move fast. While patient volumes have swelled, staffing challenges have left a less-than-optimal workforce with a bigger workload. A critical element of care can suffer on account of this pressure: patient communication. Effective patient communication is already a topic of concern in radiology. While there's a case for providing more training opportunities to support good patient communication, there's also a conversation to have about how the equipment used by a facility can impact patient communication and, ultimately, comfort. The systems technologists rely on to do their job directly impact how and when they communicate with patients -- for better or for worse. Points of friction When it comes to the setup of an MRI or CT scan, older systems generally require more manual interaction. Technologists have to spend time setting up appropriate parameters and making adjustments to ensure a patient is positioned in a proper and comfortable way. As these interactions take place, technologists spend less and less time with the patient. These moments of separation create communication gaps at a time when a patient is apt to experience some level of anxiety and stress. Then, there's the actual scan time. Older MRI and CT scanners often take longer to acquire and process imaging sequences, more specifically with lower field strength magnets and lower slice scanners. The discom...
Source: AuntMinnie.com Headlines - Category: Radiology Authors: Tags: Practice Management Source Type: news