Re-structuring the negotiated order of the hospital

Interprofessional negotiations in biopsychosocial pain rehabilitation: a need for silent bargains

Communicating effectively, including the ability to negotiate, has been claimed to be key competencies in interprofessional practice. However, these day-to-day contributions to interprofessional teamwork are not yet sufficiently understood. The aim of this article is to explore the day-to-day interprofessional negotiations in biopsychosocial pain rehabilitation. A qualitative design with an ethnographic approach was applied to the overall study. Participant observation of interprofessional encounters and clinical encounters in a pain rehabilitation ward was undertaken in 2016 for a period of 19 weeks. Intermittent interviews with 12 professionals were conducted. Data were analyzed in an abductive process using thematic analysis. We present the results as two themes: 1) Silent conflicting interests in the office, and 2) Silent dissatisfaction with meetings. The study showed that the team members had opportunities to negotiate in interprofessional offices and meetings, while they perceived insufficient time for discussion, and their individual work being interrupted by each other in the offices. They did not discuss their dissatisfaction, but silently bargained on how to spend time together. Professionals can contribute to teamwork through silent bargains that can promote a low level of conflict and thereby preserve a good workflow.

Negotiating Professional Tasks in a Hospital: A Qualitative Study of Rheumatologists and Occupational Therapists in the Management of Hand Osteoarthritis

Purpose

Societal change and rise in demand for healthcare call for new health professional practices and task redistribution. Through negotiated order theory, this study explores how hospital rheumatologists (RT) and occupational therapists (OT) negotiate professional tasks in the clinical management of hand osteoarthritis.

Methodology

Fourteen qualitative interviews and 16 observations in clinical consultations were conducted in two hospitals specialized in rheumatology in Norway. Participants included eight OTs, six RTs, and patients in consultations. Data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis.

Results

Three themes were developed from codes: hierarchical ordering of hospital work impacts interprofessional negotiations; diagnostic organization of tasks preserves RT authority; and evidence-based recommendations in rheumatology enhance OT responsibilities. Overall, RTs and OTs enact tasks in succession where higher-ranking RTs establish a diagnosis and decide the subsequent in-hospital trajectory entrenched in a medical knowledge system. When medicine does not hold evidence-based treatment alternatives for patients, OTs respond by providing therapeutic interventions that are legitimized through international recommendations in rheumatology when they equip patients with tools to cope with chronic illness.

Conclusion

Negotiations over tasks do not take place from equal power positions when status and knowledge hierarchies frame professional practices. The enactment of tasks is concurrently highly influenced by the arena of the workplace, where the two professional groups both cross boundaries and work together in concert despite professional differences in order to meet patient interests and provide relevant healthcare.

Oilcloth sessions as an implementation strategy: a qualitative study in Denmark

BACKGROUND

The aim of this study was to explore healthcare professionals, managers, and other key employees' experiences of oilcloth sessions as a strategy when implementing new emergency departments in Denmark, based on their participations in these sessions. The study addresses the importance of securing alignment in implementation strategies. Too often, this does not get enough attention in the literature and in practice. In this study, alignment among components was achieved in an educational implementation strategy called oilcloth sessions.

METHODS

The study is based on participants' observations of 13 oilcloth sessions and follow-up via 53 semi-structured interviews with the board of directors, managers, and key employees from the present emergency department and different specialty departments. Data were analysed deductively using Biggs and Tang's model of didactic alignment.

RESULTS

The analysis showed the complexity of challenges when using oilcloth sessions as a strategy when implementing a new emergency department described in terms of three phases and nine main themes (a-i): the preparation phase: (a) preparing individually and collectively, (b) objectives, (c) involving participants, (d) selecting cases; the execution phase: (e) using materials, (f) facilitating the sessions, (g) temporal structures; evaluation: (h) following up on the sessions, (i) adapting to the context.

CONCLUSIONS

This study shows that it is important to ensure alignment among elements in implementation strategies. Thus, oilcloth sessions with high alignment are useful if the challenges experienced are to be overcome and the strategy will be experienced as a useful way to support the implementation of a new emergency department from the participants' point of view. Bigg and Tang's didactic model is useful as an analytical framework to ensure alignment in implementation strategies in general.

Emergency care under the magnifying glass: a review of ethnographic studies in the scientific literature on hospital emergency services

The article presents a review of ethnographic studies in the scientific literature on hospital emergency services, with the objective of systematizing the studies and their principal findings, referring to the health-disease-healthcare process in hospital emergency services from an ethnographic perspective. An integrative literature review was performed of studies published in Argentine and international indexed journals and in the following electronic databases: PubMed, VHL, Scopus, Redalyc, and SciELO. The corpus of the analysis consisted of a total of 69 articles, which were submitted to content analysis, having identified the following analytical dimensions: quality of care, communication and bonds, subjectivity, application of information technologies, methodological reflection, patients' experiences and practices, decision-making, and violence. The results allowed identifying a process that differs from guidelines and protocols, in which healthcare workers' subjective aspects, communication and interpersonal relations, and working conditions shape, orient, and condition the treatment and care provided in the hospital. The article thus highlights the approach to subjective aspects in health studies, to understand not only health workers' perspectives and experiences but also the persistent barriers to providing better quality of care, complexifying a problem ignored by a large share of the analyses.