The Verbal and Social Interaction Nursing Students questionnaire (VSI-NS) has been created to measure the development of verbal, social and interactional skills of nursing students with patients, from their perspective in nursing care. The aim of the present study was to determine the construct validity and internal consistency reliability of the questionnaire. The study had a methodological and developmental design and was carried out in four steps: adjustment of the items, face validity, data collection and data analysis. The number of items was reduced from 48 to 31. The factor analysis of the final 31 items resulted in four quite distinct factors: “Inviting to talk about feelings and thoughts”, “Building a caring relationship”, “Encouraging social and practical aspects in daily life” and “Caring towards health and wellbeing”. The results showed satisfactory psychometric properties in terms of content validity, construct validity and the internal consistency reliability of the questionnaire.  It could be concluded that the original conceptual model could serve as a theoretical foundation to explain and understand nurses’ caring interactions with their patients.

A hospital round is a long tradition in which nurses and physicians communicate to develop an integrated plan of care together with the patient. There is insufficient knowledge of care professionals’ experiences of communication during hospital rounds, particularly in surgical units, where the physician is frequently absent during daily care. Hence, the aim of this study was to describe nurses’ experiences of communication with physicians during hospital rounds in a surgical unit. Nine qualitative unstructured interviews with nurses were conducted and analysed using Burnard’s description of content analysis. ‘An encounter involving opportunities for and challenges to teamwork’ was found to be the predominant theme. The hospital round in a surgical unit is a short encounter that can be challenged by missing patient care goals, difficulties in transmitting messages and frustration over unshared information. Further studies are needed to overcome existing knowledge gaps about communication during hospital rounds.

Challenges of improving discharge planning have been an area of concern for many years, including problems related to the lack of time for professionals to participate. In a county in South East Sweden, video conferencing was implemented in discharge planning sessions to enable distance participation of the professionals. To examine the implementation process, interviews were conducted with the implementers, who were project leaders, discharge planning coordinators in the hospital, and in home-care. The interviews were analyzed qualitatively, using directed content analysis with a deductive approach to a theoretical framework that was composed from theories about implementation processes to be suitable for the healthcare sector, consisting of the factors: implementation objects; implementation actions; actors; users; inner context and outer context. The results of this study are consistent with the framework but with the addition of a new dimension – time, i.e. time to prepare; time to understand; time to run through and time to reflect. It is suggested that implementation frameworks are useful when IT is introduced in healthcare. Framing the implementation process supports the exposure of factors and highlights relationships and states of dependence between those factors which may affect implementation.

This article describes healthcare managers' experiences of leading the implementation of video conferencing in discharge planning sessions as a new tool in everyday practice. Data collection took place through individual interviews and the interviews were analyzed using qualitative content analysis with an inductive approach. The results indicate that managers identified two distinct leadership perspectives when they reflected on the implementation process. They described a desired way of leading the implementation and communicating about the upcoming change, understanding and securing support for decisions, as well as ensuring that sufficient time is available throughout the change process. They also, however, described how they perceived that the implementation process was actually taking place, highlighting the lack of planning and preparation as well as the need for support and to be supportive, and having the courage to adopt and lead the implementation. It is suggested that managers at all levels require more information and training in how to encourage staff to become involved in designing their everyday work and in the implementation process. Managers, too, need ongoing organizational support for good leadership throughout the implementation of video conferencing in discharge planning sessions, including planning, start-up, implementation, and evaluation.

Aim

To describe and obtain a deeper understanding of social challenges and their influence on the implementation process when implementing Information systems in a Swedish health-care organisation.

Background

Despite positive effects when implementing Information systems in health-care organisations, there are difficulties in the implementation process. Nurses' experiences of being neglected have been dismissed as reasons for setbacks in implementation.

Methods

An Institutional Ethnography design was used. A deductive content analysis was made influenced by empirically identified social challenges of power, professional identity and encounters. An abstraction was made of the analysis.

Results

Nineteen nurses at macro, meso and micro levels were interviewed in focus groups. Organisational levels are lost in different ways in how to control the reformation, how to introduce Information systems as reformation strategies and in how to translate new tools and assumptions that do not fit traditional ways of working in shaping professional identities.

Conclusion and implication for nurse management

Different focus may affect the reformation of health-care organisations and implementation and knowledge processes. An implementation climate is needed where the system standards fit the values of the users. Nursing management needs to be visionary, engaged and work with risk factors in order to reform the hierarchical health-care organisation.

Implementation of information systems in healthcare has become a lengthy process where healthcare staff (eg, nurses) are expected to put information into systems without getting the overall picture of the potential usefulness for their own work. The aim of this study was to explore social challenges when implementing information systems in everyday work in a nursing context. Moreover, this study aimed at putting perceived social challenges in a theoretical framework to address them more constructively when implementing information systems in healthcare. Influenced by institutional ethnography, the findings are based on interviews, observations, and written reflections. Power (changing the existing hierarchy, alienation), professional identity (calling on hold, expert becomes novice, changed routines), and encounter (ignorant introductions, preconceived notions) were categories (subcategories) presented in the findings. Social Cognitive Theory, Diffusion of Innovations, organizational culture, and dramaturgical analysis are proposed to set up a theoretical framework. If social challenges are not considered and addressed in the implementation process, it will be affected by nurses’ solidarity to existing power structures and their own professional identity. Thus, implementation of information systems affects more aspects in the organization than might have been intended. These aspects need to be taken in to account in the implementation process.

The problems and challenges that arise in the task of improving discharge planning have been an area of concern for many years, including problems related to the lack of time for professionals to participate. In a county council area in South East Sweden, video conferencing was implemented in discharge planning sessions to enable distance participation. As part of a larger research study of the implementation process, interviews were conducted with two of the implementers. The interviews were analysed qualitatively, using directed content analysis with a deductive approach to considering a framework developed by Nilsen et al. The results of this study are consistent with the actual framework but with the addition of time, i.e. time to prepare, time to understand, time to run through and time to reflect. Further research is proposed to focus more on leadership during the implementation process and its influence on the meaning of time.

Background/Objective: This paper sets out to describe experience-based reflections on discharge planning as narrated by nursing staff in primary healthcare, along with their concerns about how the introduction of video conferencing might influence the discharge planning situation.

Methods: Interviews were conducted with nursing staff working at a primary healthcare centre in South East Sweden. Each interview took place was conducted on a one-to-one basis in dialogue form, using open questions and supported by an interview guide. It was then analysed using a phenomenological hermeneutic method. Participants were eligible for the study if they had given their informed consent and if they worked with discharge planning and home-based healthcare provision. In total, 10 of the 30 persons working at the primary healthcare centre participated in the study.

Results: It was found that nursing staff in primary healthcare regarded the planning session as stressful, time-consuming and characterised by a lack of respect between nursing staff at the hospital and nursing staff in primary healthcare. They also described uncertainty and hesitation about using video conferences where patients might probably be the losers and nursing staff the winners.

Conclusions: It is suggested that there is a need for improvement in communication and understanding between nursing staff at the hospital and nursing staff in primary healthcare in order to develop discharge planning. There is also a need for the nursing staff in primary healthcare to obtain more information about how Information Technology (IT) solutions could support their work and help them to find ways to collaborate.

A challenge when groups from different disciplines work together in implementing health information technology (HIT) in a health-care context is that words often have different meanings depending upon work practices, and definition of situations. Accessibility is a word commonly associated with HIT implementation. This study aimed to investigate different meanings of accessibility when implementing HIT in everyday work practice in a health-care context. It focused on the perspective of nurses to highlight another view of the complex relationship between HIT and information in a health-care context. This is a qualitative study influenced by institutional ethnographic. District nurses and student nurses were interviewed. The results indicate that when implementing HIT accessibility depends on working routines, social structures and patient relationship. The findings of the study suggest that interaction needs to take on a more important role when implementing HIT because people act upon words from the interpreted meaning of them. Symbolic interactionism is proposed as a way to set a mutual stage to facilitate an overall understanding of the importance of the meaning of words. There is a need for making place and space for negotiation of the meaning of words when implementing HIT in everyday work practice.