The Case of Jesica Santillon

The Case of Jesica Santillon

Communications in healthcare settings is extraordinarily difficult to manage. This in part is as a result of several stakeholders involved including the media. The crisis that faced Duke Medical Center in February 2003 is just but one out the many difficulties that the health care providers have to battle with. The family of Jesica Santillon, 17-year old girl, had brought her for treatment from their country, Mexico. The family had hoped to find a solution to Jesica’s health problem. The Mexican family settled in North Carolina and after some time was able to secure some money through charity to foot the bill of organ transplant for their daughter at Duke Medical Center (Burns, Bradley & Weiner, 2012).

The problem begun when Jesica received wrong organs and the body rejected them culminating in irreversible brain damage, hence her death. The wrong transplant occurred despite the fact that Duke Medical Center is one of the best health care providers in the nation. In addition the process went wrong despite the fact that the surgeon who operated on Jesica, Dr. James Jagers, is a highly skilled as well as a regarded physician. Procurement of the organs was a long process and some critical information was lost along the procedures made causing the error to occur. Duke explained to Jesica’s mother how an error in their system had led to the problem. However, the mum went press through a translator claiming that the Duke was trying to kill her daughter (Burns, Bradley & Weiner, 2012).

Social and Cultural Barriers to Communication

• There was a language barrier between Jesica’s and the doctors. Lorday (2012) notes that language barrier puts effective communications at risk. All the communications made were done through translators which could have hampered the process of giving convincing reasons to justify the doctors’ actions.
• Another barrier could have been the health literacy barriers. According to the reports issued by the institute of medicine (IOM), huge disparity exists between how most people receive and comprehend health information. Mostly, high health literacy among patients and their families may go unnoticed; however doctors may only discover the problem when a medical error is detected as was in Jesica Santillon’s case (Lorday, 2012).
• Cultural differences could also have been a barrier to communication between the doctors and Jesica’s doctors. Patients and families tend to have different cultural perceptions from that of clinicians or organizations on matters of health and medical care which could have led to the misunderstanding (Lorday, 2012).
• According to Anderson et al (2003), to resolve barriers such as language disparity, the hospital could resort to use of bilingual health providers so as to serve well patients who have limited English proficiency such as Jesica’s family.
• Health care providers in Duke Medical Center should have trained on cultural competency to ease their communication with this Mexican family.

Effective Transplant Process

• As noted by Burns, Bradley & Weiner (2012), due to many handoffs required in the process, the risk of important information being lost at key points is quite high. A three point check for compatibility of organs before transplant would be necessary.
• First, when the organs for transplant are dispatched from the providers, there should be a written document that shows the blood typing so as to avoid such errors.
• The Carolina Donor Services claimed that they informed Dr. Jaggers what blood type this organs were. However, this claim could not be proved as there was no written document. Furthermore, Dr. Jaggers said that he could not remember any communication about the same (Burns, Bradley & Weiner, 2012).
• Second, any person involved in handling the organs, like those who pick them, for transplant should be aware of the patient’s blood type and be able to confirm that the organs released are indeed a perfect match to the patient’s blood type. This would bridge up breakdown in communications.
• On Santillon’s,  despite the fact that the physician who went to pick up the organs at Boston was informed of the blood type three times, he could not recognize the error as he was not aware of the patient’s blood type (Burns, Bradley & Weiner, 2012).
• Finally, the surgeon who carries out the operation must be able to check the document of delivery signed by the organ providers showing the blood typing of the organs. Through this, the surgeon would be sure that the transplant is a match and be able to prevent avoidable fatalities or death.

How to communicate to different stakeholders?

• According to McDonald & Hammer (2011), effective communications enables the formation and growth of positive relationships with stakeholder community to develop. This can be used to influence attitudes as well as behavior in the wider environment.

• The family lawyer complained that the hospital was holding important information away from the public (Kopp, 2009). Being present in the case, I would have communicated to the lawyer indicating what the law requires concerning privacy of the patients.
• The family would be informed of the error immediately and assure them that everything possible is being done to ensure that the life of their patient is saved. This would make them understand that even if the patient dies it is not as a result of neglect.
• I would have provided the press with some information about the patient’s condition rather than concealing the whole issue. For example, the organization got into more problems when it appeared to be concealing some information from the media.
• I would have admitted to the community that a mistake had occurred in the system but the hospital is doing much just to ensure that such mistakes will not be repeated again. This would restore the public confidence in Duke’s healthcare system.