Electronic communication across organizational borders in healthcare: an empirical study
This empirical study of the national message exchange system is aimed to serve as a partial evaluation within a local context, based on user experiences. A qualitative method based on semi-structured, open-ended interviews with clinical system users at the University Hospital of Northern-Norway and...
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UiT Norges arktiske universitet
2015
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ftunivtroemsoe:oai:munin.uit.no:10037/9200 2023-05-15T17:43:42+02:00 Electronic communication across organizational borders in healthcare: an empirical study Nicolaisen, Kristian Berg, Kristian 2015-05-13 https://hdl.handle.net/10037/9200 eng eng UiT Norges arktiske universitet UiT The Arctic University of Norway https://hdl.handle.net/10037/9200 URN:NBN:no-uit_munin_8755 openAccess Copyright 2015 The Author(s) VDP::Teknologi: 500::Medisinsk teknologi: 620 e-Health Electronic communication Healthcare Coordination Collaboration System evaluation Integrated care Implementation Electronic message exchange VDP::Technology: 500::Medical technology: 620 TLM-3902 Master thesis Mastergradsoppgave 2015 ftunivtroemsoe 2021-06-25T17:54:44Z This empirical study of the national message exchange system is aimed to serve as a partial evaluation within a local context, based on user experiences. A qualitative method based on semi-structured, open-ended interviews with clinical system users at the University Hospital of Northern-Norway and in the healthcare service of the Municipality of Tromsø, combined with informal meetings with project members and a literature review, serves as basis for the data collection. Hospital users described message use as additional work tasks, and as a rule had to rely on several methods of communication to ensure a safe and robust transfer of clinical information across health levels. The reasons for this appeared to be the need for more synchronous communication and a divide between administrative and clinical information handling in the municipalities. Message structure was in many cases conceived as confusing, and there seemed to be a lack of a proper training strategy for system use. In communication between municipal healthcare and GPs, the system was experienced as time saving and convenient due to the way it supported the asynchronous work practices. We argue that an on-going, thorough evaluation during the implementation process could have supported the work of mapping unintended consequences and dealing with them. We have identified specific aspects that we believe could have contributed to this, such as closer follow-up and monitoring of smaller municipalities, a more thorough strategy for user education, and message notification in the hospital’s EPR. However, the gap between intended use and existing work practices seems too wide to be bridged by these measures. We argue that the EME system matches poorly with existing local practices in the hospital especially, and that local practices should have been taken into consideration before implementing a system on such a large scale. It is obvious that there has been a lack of user perspectives in the evaluation of the EME system up to this point, and our thesis must be seen as a contribution towards a more comprehensive system evaluation. Master Thesis Northern Norway Tromsø University of Tromsø: Munin Open Research Archive Norway Tromsø Eme ENVELOPE(-58.667,-58.667,-62.250,-62.250) |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
University of Tromsø: Munin Open Research Archive |
op_collection_id |
ftunivtroemsoe |
language |
English |
topic |
VDP::Teknologi: 500::Medisinsk teknologi: 620 e-Health Electronic communication Healthcare Coordination Collaboration System evaluation Integrated care Implementation Electronic message exchange VDP::Technology: 500::Medical technology: 620 TLM-3902 |
spellingShingle |
VDP::Teknologi: 500::Medisinsk teknologi: 620 e-Health Electronic communication Healthcare Coordination Collaboration System evaluation Integrated care Implementation Electronic message exchange VDP::Technology: 500::Medical technology: 620 TLM-3902 Nicolaisen, Kristian Berg, Kristian Electronic communication across organizational borders in healthcare: an empirical study |
topic_facet |
VDP::Teknologi: 500::Medisinsk teknologi: 620 e-Health Electronic communication Healthcare Coordination Collaboration System evaluation Integrated care Implementation Electronic message exchange VDP::Technology: 500::Medical technology: 620 TLM-3902 |
description |
This empirical study of the national message exchange system is aimed to serve as a partial evaluation within a local context, based on user experiences. A qualitative method based on semi-structured, open-ended interviews with clinical system users at the University Hospital of Northern-Norway and in the healthcare service of the Municipality of Tromsø, combined with informal meetings with project members and a literature review, serves as basis for the data collection. Hospital users described message use as additional work tasks, and as a rule had to rely on several methods of communication to ensure a safe and robust transfer of clinical information across health levels. The reasons for this appeared to be the need for more synchronous communication and a divide between administrative and clinical information handling in the municipalities. Message structure was in many cases conceived as confusing, and there seemed to be a lack of a proper training strategy for system use. In communication between municipal healthcare and GPs, the system was experienced as time saving and convenient due to the way it supported the asynchronous work practices. We argue that an on-going, thorough evaluation during the implementation process could have supported the work of mapping unintended consequences and dealing with them. We have identified specific aspects that we believe could have contributed to this, such as closer follow-up and monitoring of smaller municipalities, a more thorough strategy for user education, and message notification in the hospital’s EPR. However, the gap between intended use and existing work practices seems too wide to be bridged by these measures. We argue that the EME system matches poorly with existing local practices in the hospital especially, and that local practices should have been taken into consideration before implementing a system on such a large scale. It is obvious that there has been a lack of user perspectives in the evaluation of the EME system up to this point, and our thesis must be seen as a contribution towards a more comprehensive system evaluation. |
format |
Master Thesis |
author |
Nicolaisen, Kristian Berg, Kristian |
author_facet |
Nicolaisen, Kristian Berg, Kristian |
author_sort |
Nicolaisen, Kristian |
title |
Electronic communication across organizational borders in healthcare: an empirical study |
title_short |
Electronic communication across organizational borders in healthcare: an empirical study |
title_full |
Electronic communication across organizational borders in healthcare: an empirical study |
title_fullStr |
Electronic communication across organizational borders in healthcare: an empirical study |
title_full_unstemmed |
Electronic communication across organizational borders in healthcare: an empirical study |
title_sort |
electronic communication across organizational borders in healthcare: an empirical study |
publisher |
UiT Norges arktiske universitet |
publishDate |
2015 |
url |
https://hdl.handle.net/10037/9200 |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(-58.667,-58.667,-62.250,-62.250) |
geographic |
Norway Tromsø Eme |
geographic_facet |
Norway Tromsø Eme |
genre |
Northern Norway Tromsø |
genre_facet |
Northern Norway Tromsø |
op_relation |
https://hdl.handle.net/10037/9200 URN:NBN:no-uit_munin_8755 |
op_rights |
openAccess Copyright 2015 The Author(s) |
_version_ |
1766145838728347648 |