Question 1

Mark Allen, a Clinical Information Systems Manager at Intermountain Healthcare, must work with others to coordinate communication processes across 22 hospitals and over 300 clinics. If the senior executives at Intermountain Healthcare create new written protocols for healthcare delivery and then communicate these protocols across all hospitals and clinics then this is an example of what communication concept?

Downward communication

Upward communication

Horizontal communication

Informal communication

Question 2

Use your knowledge of the different concepts related to the communication process to classify the following statement or situation according to the appropriate definition.

Example	Encoding	Channel	Decoding	Feedback
Mark Allen, the Clinical Information Systems Manager, wants to communicate his ideas about teamwork and respect to all of his healthcare professionals at the hospital. He generates 5 key points on professionalism in team environments.

Question 3

Use your knowledge of communication management to answer the following questions.

Assume you are Mark Allen, the Clinical Information Systems Manager at Intermountain Healthcare. You are working with a team of physicians, nurses, administrators, and other healthcare providers to improve the quality of healthcare at Intermountain Healthcare. You decide to implement a skill development program on written communication skills.

Which of the following are skills you might consider developing in a workshop if you are focusing exclusively on improving written communication skills (as opposed to other forms of communication)? Check all that apply.

Edit and revise to correct grammar and spelling errors.

Back up assertions by supporting points with statistics, examples, citation of authorities, and anecdotes.

Follow up on unusual or inconsistent communication, such as changes in tone, vocabulary, and body language

Get to the point and use common language rather than using jargon or difficult verbiage.

Question 4

Assume you are Fritz Kron, a Regional Director for Quality at Intermountain Healthcare. You have been sharing information with physicians in your organization about changes in patient rights due to recent legislative changes in healthcare. However, you recently realized that many of your physicians were not aware of these changes despite the fact that they got multiple emails about them. Upon following up you discover that physicians are not reading the emails because they cant keep up with all the emails they receive.

Which of the following is the problem you are facing?

Selective perception

Information overload

Organizational barriers

Misperception

Question 5

How would you resolve this problem?

Reduce the layers in the communication hierarchy and allow more people to communicate with each other.

Find ways of minimizing the emails physicians have to attend to.

Ensure that physicians are properly decoding messages the way that senders intended.

Get physicians to attend to things outside their expectations.