The Cultural Communication Gaps in Health Care: A Challenge to Patient Safety

Patient safety is a central topic in health care. Health professionals hold the responsibility to ensure patient safety. The culture of hierarchy and collectivism may add complexities to the communication process in health care and resulting gaps in communication between health professionals and patients as well as among health professionals. In most of the cases, hierarchy and collectivism stand together and somehow are also related to the overburdened healthcare system and inadequate education system for health professionals. The shortage and unequal distribution of health professionals caused increasing workload. Doctors often have limited time for clinical consultation. Nurses and pharmacists also reported being overburdened by different clinical tasks. Health professionals are not well-prepared in their education to communicate soundly with patients or to act as patient advocates. These culture and system-related issues consequently have an influence on the relations between patients and health professionals and among professionals in daily clinical practice and leave the gaps that bring challenges to patient safety.