Communication among health professionals

BMJ 1998;317:279 ( 25 July )

Letters

Communication among health professionals

Poor communication puts patients at risk

Message pagers may improve communication

Poor communication puts patients at risk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ Gosbee's editorial on communication among health professionals will hardly surprise anyone working in the health service,¹and his conclusions are certainly borne out by our recent experience,despite assertions by Kozak et al that doctors can communicateeffectively on paper.²

As part of the continuing post-marketing surveillance of omeprazole we have been tracing patients from this cohort who havemoved since enrolment; we have used a postal questionnaire toask their present general practitioners for information on morbidity.Several general practitioners responded and expressed their willingnessto cooperate, but stated that they were unable to help, as theycould not decipher notes written by the patient's previous generalpractitioner.

Having just completed a review of over 3000 patient notes, it is clear that these are not isolated cases. They are symptomaticof the failure of the present system of record keeping in primarycare to accurately transfer information to . . . [Full text of this article]

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