Older adults' perceptions and experiences of interprofessional communication as part of the delivery of integrated care in the primary healthcare sector: a meta-ethnography of qualitative studies.

BACKGROUND: Communication between patients and healthcare providers, and effective interprofessional communication, are essential to the provision of high-quality care. Implementing a patient-centred approach may lead to patients experiencing a sense of comfort, validation, and active participation in own healthcare. However, home-dwelling older adults' perspectives on interprofessional communication (IPC) are lacking. The aim is therefore to explore how home-dwelling older adults experience communication in connection with the delivery of integrated care. METHODS: The meta-synthesis was conducted in line with Noblit and Hare's seven phases of meta-ethnography. A systematic literature search was conducted by two university librarians in seven databases using the search terms 'older adults', 'communication', 'integrated care' and 'primary care'. All articles were reviewed by two authors independently. 11 studies were included for analysis. RESULTS: Older adults are aware of IPC and have preferences regarding how it is conducted. Three main themes were identified in the reciprocal analysis: (1) Inconsistent care perceived as lack of IPC, (2) individual preferences regarding involvement and awareness of IPC and (3) lack of IPC may trigger negative feelings. CONCLUSIONS: This meta-ethnography shows the perspective of older adults on IPC as part of integrated care. Our study shows that older adults are concerned about whether healthcare personnel talk to each other or not and recognise IPC as fundamental in providing consistent care. The perspectives of older adults are relevant for clinicians and politicians, as well as researchers, when developing and implementing future integrated care services for home-dwelling older adults.

Forming Nursing Home Practices That Support Quality of Care for Residents. A Qualitative Observational Study.

Background: Residents of nursing homes are increasingly frail and dependent. At the same time, there are increased demands for quality of care and social life for individual residents. In this article, we explore how care workers contribute to quality of care and social life in shared living rooms in nursing homes. Methods: An ethnographically inspired design was applied, and a purposive sample of six units for long-term care in three nursing homes in Norway was included in the study. Data were collected by participant observation, including informal conversations with the staff and residents, and the data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Results: The analysis identified three main themes: working within the given context, creating care practices and organizing activities. The empirical findings demonstrate that care work focuses on meeting both the residents' physical and social needs and aiming for high-quality care and social life for the residents in nursing homes. Conclusion: The results of this study illustrate that nursing home practices are focused on residents as a group. However, care workers take advantage of personal skills and resources to work towards person-centred care within the given context. The quality of care is recognized in terms of how care workers meet individual residents' needs. The quality of care seems highly related to the capability and skills of individual care workers.

Interdisciplinary frontline teams in home-based healthcare services-paradoxes between organisational work structures and the trust model: a qualitative study.

BACKGROUND: Achieving access to quality healthcare services to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages is one of the United Nation's Sustainable Developments Goals. In view of this goal, sustainable community healthcare services in Norway need to be urgently restructured in light of demographic changes, including an increase in the percentage of older adults in the country. National healthcare policies recommend finding new ways to organise and perform services using new technology, new methods and new solutions. The goal is to ensure greater continuity in the provision of services and softer transitions that enable service users to deal with a smaller number of people. The trust model is one such suggested organisational approach. The goal of the trust model is to involve service users and their next of kin in decisions that concern them while also trusting frontline workers' professional judgement in assessing the need for services and adjusting them to address changes in the health of the users, thus making the services individually tailored and more flexible. This study aims to explore how organisational work structures influence the delivery of interdisciplinary home-based healthcare services. METHODS: Observations, individual-, and focus groups interviews were conducted within community home-based healthcare services in a large Norwegian city with managers at different levels, nurses, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, purchaser-unit employees and other healthcare workers. Data was analysed thematically. RESULTS: The results are presented in terms of themes- "Balancing on the margins: Negotiations between the time available, users' needs, unforeseen events and administrative tasks" and "One gathered unit, but with different work structures". The results identify organisational work structures that influence the performance of the trust model with regard to its intention of making flexible and individually tailored services available. However, these structures are different for the members of the interdisciplinary team, thus creating several paradoxes that need to be negotiated while fulfilling their daily responsibilities. CONCLUSION: This study suggests that it is crucial to pay attention to paradoxes and structures experienced by interdisciplinary frontline workers in home-based healthcare services, since they are unavoidable factors that need to be acknowledged when designing approaches for addressing the changes expected in community healthcare services.

Managers' strategies in handling the COVID-19 pandemic in Norwegian nursing homes and homecare services.

PURPOSE: This study aims to explore nursing home and home care managers' strategies in handling the COVID-19 pandemic. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: This study has a qualitative design with semistructured individual interviews conducted digitally by videophone (Zoom). Eight managers from nursing homes and five managers from home care services located in a large urban municipality in eastern Norway participated. Systematic text condensation methodology was used for the analysis. FINDINGS: The managers used several strategies to handle challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including being proactive and thinking ahead in terms of possible scenarios that might occur, continuously training of staff in new procedures and routines and systematic information sharing at all levels, as well as providing different ways of disseminating information for staff, service users and next-of-kins. To handle staffing challenges, managers used strategies such as hiring short-term staff that were temporary laid off from other industries and bringing in students. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: The COVID-19 pandemic heavily affected health-care systems worldwide, which has led to many health-care studies. The situation in nursing homes and home care services, which were strongly impacted by the pandemic and in charge of a vulnerable group of people, has not yet received enough attention in research. This study, therefore, seeks to contribute to this research gap by investigating how managers in nursing homes and home care services used different strategies to handle the COVID-19 pandemic.

Healthcare leaders' use of innovative solutions to ensure resilience in healthcare during the Covid-19 pandemic: a qualitative study in Norwegian nursing homes and home care services.

BACKGROUND: The Covid-19 pandemic introduced a global crisis for the healthcare systems. Research has paid particular attention to hospitals and intensive care units. However, nursing homes and home care services in charge of a highly vulnerable group of patients have also been forced to adapt and transform to ensure the safety of patients and staff; yet they have not received enough research attention. This paper aims to explore how leaders in nursing homes and home care services used innovative solutions to handle the Covid-19 pandemic to ensure resilient performance during times of disruption and major challenges. METHODS: A qualitative exploratory case study was used to understand the research question. The selected case was a large city municipality in Norway. This specific municipality was heavily affected by the Covid-19 pandemic; therefore, information from this municipality allowed us to gather rich information. Data were collected from documents, semi-structured interviews, and a survey. At the first interview phase, informants included 13 leaders, Head of nursing home (1 participant), Head of Sec. (4 participants), Quality manager (4 participants), Head of nursing home ward (3 participants), and a Professional development nurse (1 participant), at 13 different nursing homes and home care services. At the second phase, an online survey was distributed at 16 different nursing homes and home care services to expand our understanding of the phenomenon from other leaders within the case municipality. Twenty-two leaders responded to the survey. The full dataset was analysed in accordance with inductive thematic analysis methodology. RESULTS: The empirical results from the analysis provide a new understanding of how nursing homes and home care leaders used innovative solutions to maintain appropriate care for infected and non-infected patients at their sites. The results showed that innovative solutions could be separated into technology for communication and remote care, practice innovations, service innovations, and physical innovations. CONCLUSION: This study offers a new understanding of the influence of crisis-driven innovation for resilience in healthcare during the Covid-19 pandemic. Nursing home and home care leaders implemented several innovative solutions to ensure resilient performance during the first 6-9 months of the pandemic. In terms of resilience, different innovative solutions can be divided based on their influence into situational, structural, and systemic resilience. A framework for bridging innovative solutions and their influence on resilience in healthcare is outlined in the paper.

Needs-led research: a way of employing user involvement when devising research questions on the trust model in community home-based health care services in Norway.

BACKGROUND: This paper presents a user involvement process, called needs-led research, conducted as a part of a doctoral degree project aiming to explore research priorities and, ultimately, to develop a final top 10 list of questions relevant to the field of research. There is evidence of a mismatch between what user groups within a research field find relevant to study and what is actually being done. User involvement is a method that can accommodate this, and there is a growing attention and amount of research in this field based on an understanding that people who receive health care services, and their next of kin and clinicians, are uniquely positioned to contribute to research in order to understand their experiences better and improve the services. This paper presents a user involvement process in a small-scale study, referred to as needs-led research, which concerns the 'performance of the trust model in community home-based health care services'. The process was conducted as part of a doctoral degree project. METHOD: The needs-led research process is inspired by the James Lind Alliance (JLA), which focuses on bringing together service users, next of kin and clinicians on equal terms to explore research priorities. The process consisted of five-steps, each of which involved representatives from service users, next of kin and clinicians: 1) narrowing down the theme; 2) steering group meeting; 3) gathering input through a survey; 4) data processing and interim priority setting; and 5) final priority setting. RESULTS: Almost 200 participants contributed during the five steps, 294 inputs were gathered, and 35 participants voted for the top 10 list. The top 10 list is presented. CONCLUSION: This paper provides an example of how user involvement can be employed to devise research questions that are relevant for clinicians, service users, next of kin and service providers concerning the 'performance of the trust model in home-based health care'. It also outlines some strengths and limitations of the process. The needs-led research process shows that user involvement in research is feasible for developing research questions in small-scale studies. We hope that the top 10 list presented will encourage future research to address issues of importance regarding the performance of the trust model in community home-based health care services.

User involvement is a topic that has received increasing attention in research aimed at ensuring relevant and needed knowledge. It can be practised in a variety of ways, and the literature claims that there is no gold standard for how it should be done. This paper presents a user involvement process conducted autumn 2019 to spring 2020, hereby referred to as needs-led research (NLR), inspired by the James Lind Alliance (JLA). The scope of the process is the 'performance of the trust model in community home-based health care services'. The trust model is a new way of organising home-based health care services where small interdisciplinary teams work with the service users and their next of kin on tailoring the services based on the users' answers to the question 'What matters to you?'Through a five-step process, in which representatives of service users, next of kin and clinicians participated in meetings and online surveys, the goal of the NLR process was to explore research priorities and, ultimately, to develop a final top 10 list of questions relevant to the field of research. This paper describes the NLR process and discusses its strengths and limitations. We found the process to be important when identifying relevant research questions concerning a topic on which little research has been conducted, and in which we as researchers have little experience. The final top 10 list is also presented.

Information practices of health care professionals related to patient discharge from hospital.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the practices of hospital professionals in providing information to patients and to professionals in primary care at patient discharge from hospital. METHODS: We used a qualitative methodology with individual face-to-face interviews with 22 hospital physicians and nurses. RESULTS: We identified two themes in the information practices of health care professionals at patient discharge from hospital: (i) producing information in parallel processes and (ii) challenges in tailoring information to different recipients. CONCLUSION: Hospital routines and professional norms prescribing that discharge information should take place in parallel processes by hospital physicians and by nurses impede transparency and interdisciplinary coordination in primary care. A strong focus on providing patients only with information that is tailored for them neglects the interest patients may have in seeing what information about them is transmitted to primary care. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Hospital routines and professional culture are important factors to consider in efforts to promote more transparent health care for patients and improved interdisciplinary communication. This is not only a matter of attitudes in the individual health care professional. In the development of solutions for electronic exchange of information in health care, all these factors should be taken into account.

Patients' reported reasons for non-use of an internet-based patient-provider communication service: qualitative interview study.

BACKGROUND: The adoption of Internet-based patient-provider communication services (IPPC) in health care has been slow. Patients want electronic communication, and the quality of health care can be improved by offering such IPPCs. However, the rate of enrollment in such services remains low, and the reasons for this are unclear. Knowledge about the barriers to use is valuable during implementation of IPPCs in the health care services, and it can help timing, targeting, and tailoring IPPCs to different groups of patients. OBJECTIVE: The goal of our study was to investigate patients' views of an IPPC that they could use from home to pose questions to nurses and physicians at their treatment facility, and their reported reasons for non-use of the service. METHODS: This qualitative study was based on individual interviews with 22 patients who signed up for, but did not use, the IPPC. RESULTS: Patients appreciated the availability and the possibility of using the IPPC as needed, even if they did not use it. Their reported reasons for not using the IPPC fell into three main categories: (1) they felt that they did not need the IPPC and had sufficient access to information elsewhere, (2) they preferred other types of communication such as telephone or face-to-face contact, or (3) they were hindered by IPPC attributes such as login problems. CONCLUSIONS: Patients were satisfied with having the opportunity to send messages to health care providers through an IPPC, even if they did not use the service. IPPCs should be offered to the patients at an appropriate time in the illness trajectory, both when they need the service and when they are receptive to information about the service. A live demonstration of the IPPC at the point of enrollment might have increased its use. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00971139; http://clinicaltrial.gov/ct2/show/NCT00971139 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6KlOiYJrW).

Clinical documentation as a source of information for patients - possibilities and limitations.

Recent legislation in many countries has given patients the right to access their own patient records. Making health-care professionals' assessments and decisions more transparent by giving patients access to their records is expected to provide patients with useful health information and reduce the power imbalance between patient and provider. We conducted both a mail survey and a face-to-face interview study, including patients who had requested a paper copy of their patient records (EPR), to explore their experiences. For many study participants, a view of their records filled in holes in the oral information they previously received. They had problems understanding parts of what they read, but rarely asked for help. Instead they searched for explanations on the Internet or attempted to understand based on the context. Patients are still afraid of seeming suspicious or displeased if they indicate that they would like to read their records. Health-care organizations should consider actively offering patients the chance to view their clinical documentation to a larger extent than what has been done so far.

How does an online patient-nurse communication service meet the information needs of men with recently diagnosed testicular cancer?

Online communication has become a potential means of communication between patients and health care providers, but so far few studies are published about online communication as part of nursing care. The aim of this study was to explore how an online patient-nurse communication (OPNC) service meets the information needs of men with newly diagnosed testicular cancer. We applied a qualitative approach by examining the content of online messages sent by patients to nurses in a specialist cancer unit. In addition, individual interviews were conducted with patients who had used the OPNC service. Four themes became distinct through a synthesis of the material from the interviews and the messages: "a means for managing illness-related concerns at home," "a means for ensuring information flow," "a means for strategic information seeking," and "not yet available when needed most." Individualized information provided by nurses with access to their medical record was shown to be important to these patients. The findings of this study indicate that not only may access to an OPNC service help patients fulfill their otherwise unmet information needs, but also it may prevent delays and discontinuity in care due to informational gaps and lead to improved patient safety.

"You are not at all bothersome" - nurses' online communication with testicular cancer patients.

To some extent, electronic communication has supplemented nurses' face-to-face contact with patients over the last few years. In this paper, we report findings from a study in which we examined cancer nurses' answers to messages from testicular cancer patients in a nurse-managed online patient-provider communication service. The aim of the study was to investigate how nurses manage to meet patients' different questions and concerns, and what aspects of expert nursing care are demonstrated when they communicate with patients online. The content of the messages formed a continuum from practical to existential issues. In their answers, the nurses demonstrated an ability to make reflected choices between both support modalities and means of communication. The professional knowledge and care of expert cancer nurses were clearly exposed in the nurses' answers, although they were good at adapting their professional language so that it would be understandable to the patients.

Lay people's experiences with reading their medical record.

An increasing number of patients now make use of their legal right to read their medical record. We report findings from a study in which we conducted qualitative interviews with 17 Norwegian adult patients about their experiences of requesting a copy of their medical record following a hospital stay. Interviews took place between May, 2008 and April 2009. The analytical process, guided by qualitative content analysis, identified two main themes; "keeping a sense of control" and "not feeling respected as a person". The informants' experiences with reading their own medical record were often connected to their experiences in direct communication with health care professionals during the hospital stay, revealing a delicate interaction between trust and power. The informants were hoping for a more mutual exchange of information and knowledge from which they could benefit in the management of their own health. We conclude that to meet patients' expectations of mutuality, health care professionals in hospitals need to be more conscious about their attitudes and communication skills as well as how they exercise their power to define the patient's situation. At the same time, there should be more focus on how structural changes in the organization of hospitals may have impaired the capacity of health care professionals to meet these expectations. In the future, greater attention should also be paid to information exchange to avoid placing unreasonable responsibility on the patient to compensate for deficits in the health care system.

Why do people want a paper copy of their electronic patient record?

Changes have recently been passed in the Norwegian legislation, allowing for more exchange of patient information between health personnel. These legal changes came as a result of a long and still ongoing debate concerning the potential conflict between confidentiality issues and patient safety as health care is getting more fragmented. At the same time, an increasing number of patients now make use of their legal right to access their patient record. In this paper, we shed light on some of the reasons why patients request a copy of their record. We report the preliminary results from an interview study in which seventeen patients who have asked for a copy of their patient record following a hospital stay have been interviewed. In our interview study, securing transmission of information between health care workers is one of the main reasons for requesting a copy of the record. We will discuss how this finding might contribute to the ongoing debate.

[Electronic discharge reports and information to municipal health services]. / Elektronisk utskrivningsrapport og informasjon til kommunehelsetjenesten.

BACKGROUND: To strengthen communication and exchange of information between SUS (Stavanger University Hospital) and the health and care sector in Stavanger municipality, SUS started sending electronic discharge reports to the municipality in 2005. MATERIAL AND METHODS: We compared the word count and content of handwritten, paper-based reports with that in electronic reports. The material consists of 69 paper-based reports and 52 electronic reports. RESULTS: Electronic discharge reports were longer than paper-based reports. Word counts in the physicians' part of the report increased by 172 % from paper-based to electronic reports and that in the nurses' part of the report increased by 43 %. Reporting of administrative and practical information increased substantially. Significant change was found in four of the 24 variables describing specific health issues. INTERPRETATION: The introduction of electronic discharge reports resulted in longer reports being sent from the hospital to the municipal health and care services, but the information was not necessarily complete or satisfactory for the municipality.

Patients reading their health records - what emotional factors are involved?

In many countries, an increasing number of patients now make use of their legal right to access their health record. In this paper we shed light on the role of emotional factors involved when patients read their record. We report the preliminary results from an interview study in which eight patients who have asked for a copy of their electronic health record following a hospital stay have been interviewed. Our results show that distrust is an important emotional factor involved in asking for record access. When reading the record, several patients also discovered discrepancies between verbal communication and the written documentation, which causes irritation and resentment. Patients' reactions were due to health personnel's lack of openness in direct communication with them. We conclude that health personnel should be prepared to go more into the role as discussion partners with patients to show that their concerns are taken seriously, and that more should be done to avoid documentation errors due to weaknesses in documentation routines.

Implementation of nursing care plan in the Electronic Patient Record (EPR) findings and experiences.

In this presentation we share findings and experiences from introduction of the nursing care plan in the integrated EPR in our hospital. We explain the chosen implementation strategy, and present findings from a survey distributed to the head nurses and key users, as well as audit of the charted nursing care plans. The main challenges in implementing electronic nursing care plan in our hospital turned out to be organizing and allocating sufficient time for the introduction and necessary training of the users. The head nurses played and play a key role in facilitating for and making sure that introduction to the system and training receives the necessary priority among the staff on the ward. The introduction of the nursing care plan in the integrated EPR concluded the introduction of EPR in the nursing service, and has contributed to a re-newed discussion of ease-of-use in the clinical setting, structure and content of the nursing care plan.