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Threats to patient safety in telenursing as revealed in S wedish telenurses' reflections on their dialogues
Author(s) -
Röing Marta,
Rosenqvist Urban,
K. Holmström Inger
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of caring sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.678
H-Index - 66
eISSN - 1471-6712
pISSN - 0283-9318
DOI - 10.1111/scs.12016
Subject(s) - patient safety , context (archaeology) , health care , qualitative research , intervention (counseling) , quality (philosophy) , nursing , affect (linguistics) , psychology , content analysis , medicine , medical education , sociology , political science , history , communication , social science , philosophy , archaeology , epistemology , law
Telenursing is a rapidly expanding actor in the S wedish healthcare system, as in other Western nations. Although rare, tragic events occur within this context, and are reminders of the importance of giving patient safety the highest priority. As telenurses' main sources of information are their dialogues with the callers, the provision of safe care can depend on the quality of this dialogue. The aim of this study was to identify issues that could threaten patient safety in telenurses' dialogues with callers. As part of an educational intervention, a researcher visited a sample of six telenurses five to six times at their workplace to listen to and discuss, together with the telenurses, their dialogues with callers in stimulated recall sessions. Each call and the following discussion between researcher and telenurse was tape‐recorded and transcribed as text, resulting in a total of 121 calls. Qualitative content analysis of the reflections and following discussions revealed that threats to patient safety could be related to the surrounding society, to the organisation of telenursing, to the telenurse and to the caller. This study gives insight into significant problem areas that can affect patient safety in telenursing in S weden. Issues that need to be focused on in telenursing educational programmes and future research are suggested, as well as the need for organisational development.