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Framing healthcare professionals in written adverse events: A discourse analysis
Author(s) -
Gyberg Anna,
Henoch Ingela,
Lepp Margret,
Ulin Kerstin
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
nursing inquiry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.66
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1440-1800
pISSN - 1320-7881
DOI - 10.1111/nin.12461
Subject(s) - framing (construction) , harm , health care , patient safety , health professionals , perspective (graphical) , psychology , medicine , discourse analysis , qualitative research , nursing , public relations , social psychology , sociology , political science , history , law , linguistics , social science , archaeology , artificial intelligence , computer science , philosophy
Healthcare professionals have a major responsibility to protect patients from harm. Despite vast efforts to decrease the number of adverse events, the progression of patient safety has internationally been acknowledged as slow. From a social construction perspective, it has been argued that the understanding of patient safety is contextual based on historical and structural rules, and that this meaning construction points out different directions of possible patient safety actions. By focusing on fact construction and its productive and limiting effect on how something can be understood, we explored the discourses about healthcare professionals in 29 written reports of adverse events as reported by patients, relatives, and healthcare professionals. Through the analysis, a discourse about the healthcare professionals as experts was found. The expert role most dominantly included an understanding that adverse events were identified through physical signs and that patient safety could be prevented by more strictly following routines and work procedures. We drew upon the conclusion that these regimes of truth brought power to the expert discourse, to the point that it became difficult for patients and relatives to engage in patient safety actions on their terms.