Analyzing a Research Paper Entitled "Silence Kills"

Silence Kills
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Silence Kills
Section 1
The title of the article “Silence Kills: The Seven Crucial Conversations for Healthcare” by Maxfield et al. (2005) accurately describes what the study is about. In particular, the article shows that silence in healthcare practice contributes to over 60% of avoidable and medication errors, which are caused by mistakes in interpersonal communication.
The abstract represents the article well. Indeed, it portrays that individuals’ inability to confront risky topics gives room for risks to go unsolved, which contributes to medical errors or loss of lives. For example, silence is the primary reason why about 3.5 million people get infections from physicians who failed to wash their hands, one in 20 in-patients receive wrong medications. In addition, around 195,000 individuals die due to mistakes made in hospitals (Maxfield et al., 2005).
The introduction shows the article’s purpose by indicating the seven “crucial conversations” that individuals in healthcare fail to address, contributing to unacceptable error rates. VitalSmarts and the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses suggest that addressing the seven crucial conversations can improve productivity, quality of care, and a reduction in nursing turnover.
When it comes to the statement of the problem, it is clear that silence is dangerous in healthcare and other sectors. Unfortunately, numerous healthcare professionals act in ways that allow problems and risks to go unaddressed.
The reason for conducting the study is explained clearly. Specifically, it involves showing how silence contributes to errors in the healthcare sector and how to address these problems. In addition, the study points out how to measure the seven crucial conservations and implement an action plan to address various issues.
The research questions are defined clearly. The primary research question is exploring how silence contributes to chronic problems and avoidable errors in healthcare settings. Crucial conversations relate to staff commitment, patient safety, medical errors, discretionary effort, quality of care, high employee turnover, and workers satisfaction (Maxfield et al., 2005).
A concise theoretical framework is described that depicts the significance of the study. For instance, the concerns that might arise from the challenge of proper communication include poor teamwork, broken rules, micromanagement, lack of support, disrespect, incompetence, and mistakes. Unfortunately, over half of the United States of America’s (USA) healthcare workforce makes the above errors occasionally.
The literature review is relevant to the study, comprehensive, and includes recent research. For instance, it is evident that if healthcare professionals can communicate efficiently without ignoring mistakes made by their colleagues, they can avoid medication errors. In other words, the literature review supports the ...