Communication--the vital link in best practice organisations. Case study: the Princess Alexandra Hospital Best Practice Communication Project

The critical issue of communication has been addressed by the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane. The hospital commissioned a communications audit, benchmarked outside the health sector in the service industry, and designed and piloted communication strategies at an organisational level and in selected clinical settings. The communications models developed have emphasised the importance of planning, evaluation and flexibility to enable the modification of communication strategies to continually improve communication in the organisation. It is envisaged that regular communication assessments will be conducted with the use of audit tools which have been developed to compare results over time.