Dataset Information

Nurses' perspectives on their communication with patients in busy oncology wards: A qualitative study.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Despite an increase in emphasis on psychosocial care in cancer nursing, time constraints and nurses' lack of knowledge in skilled communication continue to be challenges. AIMS:To examine how cancer care nurses view their communication with patients and how they deal with the psychosocial needs of patients in busy wards. DESIGN:A qualitative interview study. METHODS:Focus groups and individual interviews were conducted with eleven hospital-based cancer nurses in Hong Kong from July 2, 2017 to January 2, 2018. RESULTS:A qualitative thematic analysis of the data identified three themes: 1. Intentional and unintentional psychosocial care that is secondary in focus; 2. Managing an emotionally challenged environment; 3. Mentoring and learning. CONCLUSION:Oncology settings are time-constrained, emotionally charged environments for nurses, and providing psychosocial care for patients is a secondary concern. While proactive strategies can be used to avert patient complaints, being open and attending to the individual needs of patients is equally important to avoid blocking in nurse-patient communication. Despite emotional entanglement and tensions, the positive follow-up strategies used by nurses to manage the patients' emotions and provide psychosocial care reflect good practices. Leadership and support are needed to deal with the nurses' perception that their communication training has been ineffective and their ability to manage strong emotions deficient. Communication skills, honed by making continuous opportunities to communicate available, as well as an understanding of emotional labour, need to be integrated with mindfulness in the nurses' care of themselves and their patients. Notwithstanding the importance of experience in oncology care for junior nurses, it is necessary for both junior and senior nurses to learn about and reflect upon the different forms of emotional labour if value-based care is to be provided. In addition, it is essential for junior nurses to receive continuous coaching and mentoring, and to engage in reflective learning from each clinical encounter with oncology patients.

SUBMITTER: Chan EA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6812861 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Nurses' perspectives on their communication with patients in busy oncology wards: A qualitative study.

Chan E Angela EA Tsang Pak Lik PL Ching Shirley Siu Yin SSY Wong F Y FY Lam Winsome W

PloS one 20191024 10

<h4>Background</h4>Despite an increase in emphasis on psychosocial care in cancer nursing, time constraints and nurses' lack of knowledge in skilled communication continue to be challenges.<h4>Aims</h4>To examine how cancer care nurses view their communication with patients and how they deal with the psychosocial needs of patients in busy wards.<h4>Design</h4>A qualitative interview study.<h4>Methods</h4>Focus groups and individual interviews were conducted with eleven hospital-based cancer nurs ...[more]

PMID: 31648272

Similar Datasets

Project description:Metaphors in communication can serve to convey individuals' backgrounds, contexts, experiences, and worldviews. Metaphors used in a health care setting can help achieve consensual communication in professional-patient relationships. Patients use metaphors to describe symptoms, or how disease affects them. Health professionals draw on shared understanding of such metaphors to better comprehend and meet patient needs, and to communicate information that patients can more easily integrate into their lives. This study incorporated a theoretical framework based on four worldviews, each with an underlying foundational metaphor (root metaphor). The use of these root metaphors (formism, mechanism, contextualism, and organicism) can have an explanatory function and serve to impart new meanings, as each type of metaphor can lead to a particular interpretation. The study aimed to extract and discuss the root metaphors, with a view to analyzing the communication between health professionals and patients.In a case study in Spain over a six-month period, we analyzed the content of recorded, transcribed interviews conducted by one nurse with 32 patients who had chronic illnesses. We inductively extracted five categories that emerged from the interviews: blood sugar, cholesterol, exercise, blood pressure, and diet. We then examined these categories from the standpoint of each of the four root metaphors using two approaches: A series (deductive) and an emergent (inductive) approach.The results show that the nurse tended to primarily use two worldviews: mechanism and formism. In contrast, patients tended to favor mechanism when discussing cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar levels, whereas contextualism was predominant when the category was diet or exercise.This study adds to the existing literature on health professionals and patients' communication. It shows how the use of Pepper's root metaphors help to analyze the communication between the nurse and patients. Furthermore, it shows they are both using different root metaphors when they are talking about illness and treatments especially regarding blood sugar, cholesterol, exercise, blood pressure, and diet. Further qualitative and quantitative studies are needed to solidly these findings.

Project description:BackgroundLow mobility during an acute care medical hospitalization is frequent and associated with adverse outcomes, particularly among older patients. Better understanding barriers and facilitators to improve mobility during hospitalization could help develop effective interventions. The goal of this study was to assess barriers and facilitators to older medical patients' hospital mobility, from the point of view of patients and clinicians, to develop a framework applicable in clinical practice.MethodsWe conducted a qualitative study in one university and two non-university hospitals of two different language and cultural regions of Switzerland, including 13 focus groups (FGs; five with patients, eight with clinicians). We included 24 adults aged 60 years or older hospitalized on an acute general internal medicine ward of one of the three participating hospitals during the previous years, and 34 clinicians (15 physicians, nine nurses/nursing assistants, 10 physiotherapists) working on those wards. The FG guides included open-ended questions exploring mobility experiences, expectations, barriers and facilitators to mobility, consequences of low mobility and knowledge on mobility. We applied an inductive thematic analysis.ResultsWe identified four themes of barriers and facilitators to mobility: 1) patient-related factors; 2) clinician-related factors; 3) social interactions; and 4) non-human factors. Clinician-related factors were only mentioned in clinician FGs. Otherwise, subthemes identified from patient and clinician FGs were similar and codes broadly overlapped. Subthemes included motivation, knowledge, expectations, mental and physical state (theme 1); process, knowledge - skills, mental state - motivation (theme 2); interpersonal relationships, support (theme 3); hospital setting - organization (theme 4).ConclusionsFrom patients' and clinicians' perspectives, a broad spectrum of human and structural factors influences mobility of older patients hospitalized on an acute general internal medicine ward. New factors included privacy issues and role perception. Many of those factors are potentially actionable without additional staff resources. This study is a first step in participatory research to improve mobility of older medical inpatients.

Project description:BACKGROUND:Sweden is rapidly becoming an increasingly multicultural and digitalized society. Encounters between pediatric nurses and migrant mothers, who are often primary caregivers, are impeded by language problems and cultural differences. To support mothers, doulas, who are women having the same linguistic and cultural backgrounds, serve as cultural bridges in interactions with health care professionals. In addition, information and communication technology (ICT) can potentially be used to manage interactions owing to its accessibility. OBJECTIVE:The objective of this study was to investigate the role of ICT in managing communicative challenges related to language problems and cultural differences in encounters with migrant mothers from the perspectives of Swedish pediatric nurses and doulas. METHODS:Deep semistructured interviews with five pediatric nurses and four doulas from a migrant-dense urban area in western Sweden were audio recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using thematic content analysis. RESULTS:The results showed that ICT contributes to mitigating communicative challenges in interactions by providing opportunities for nurses and migrant mothers to receive distance interpreting via telephones and to themselves interpret using language translation apps. Using images and films from the internet is especially beneficial while discussing complex and culturally sensitive issues to complement or substitute verbal messages. These findings suggest that ICT helps enable migrant mothers to play a more active role in interactions with health care professionals. This has important implications for their involvement in other areas, such as child care, language learning, and integration in Sweden. CONCLUSIONS:The findings of this study suggest that ICT can be a bridging tool between health care professionals and migrants. The advantages and disadvantages of translation tools should be discussed to ensure that quality communication occurs in health care interactions and that health information is accessible. This study also suggests the development of targeted multimodal digital support, including pictorial and video resources, for pediatric care services.

Project description:BackgroundCommunication serves several functions in pediatric oncology, but communication deficiencies persist. Little is known about the broad spectrum of barriers contributing to these deficiencies. Identifying these barriers will support new strategies to improve communication.MethodsThe authors performed 10 focus groups on perceived communication barriers with nurses, nurse practitioners, physicians, and psychosocial professionals across 2 academic institutions. They analyzed transcripts by adapting a multilevel framework from organizational psychology.ResultsThe authors identified 6 levels of barriers to communication from the clinicians' perspectives: individual, team, organization, collaborating hospital, community, and policy. Individual barriers were subdivided into clinician characteristics, family characteristics, or characteristics of the clinician-family interaction. Within each level and sublevel, several manifestations of barriers were identified. Some barriers, such as a lack of comfort with difficult topics (individual), cultural differences (individual), a lack of a shared team mental model (team), and time pressure (organization), manifested similarly across professions and institutions. Other barriers, such as a need for boundaries (individual), intimidation or embarrassment of family (individual), unclear roles and authority (team), and excessive logistical requirements (policy), manifested differently across professions. With the exception of collaborating hospitals, participants from all professions identified barriers from each level. Physicians did not discuss collaborating hospital barriers.ConclusionsNurses, nurse practitioners, physicians, and psychosocial professionals experience communication barriers at multiple levels, which range from individual- to policy-level barriers. Yet their unique clinical roles and duties can lead to different manifestations of some barriers. This multilevel framework might help clinicians and researchers to identify targets for interventions to improve communication experiences for families in pediatric oncology.Lay summaryClinicians and families experience many barriers to communication in pediatric oncology. The authors performed 10 focus groups with 59 clinicians who cared for children with cancer. In these focus groups, barriers to effective communication were discussed. In this article, the authors report on an analysis of the responses. Six levels of barriers to communication were found: individual, team, organization, collaborating hospital, community, and policy. With an understanding of these barriers, interventions can be developed to target these barriers in hopes of improving communication for parents and patients in pediatric oncology.

Project description:BackgroundNurses with a strong professional self-concept tend to exhibit a positive mindset and strong work engagement, delivering high-quality patient care. Although numerous quantitative studies have examined the factors impacting professional self-concept, there remains a limited exploration of these factors from the perspective of nurses themselves.MethodsThis qualitative descriptive study uses the PERMA theory and Social Cognitive Theory as the theoretical framework. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 nurses from six public hospitals in China. The data were analyzed thematically using a combination of inductive and deductive approaches.ResultsNurses' understanding of professional self-concept could be divided into four categories: professional identity, competence, care, and knowledge. Factors influencing nurses' professional self-concept were categorized into eight subthemes in three domains: (1) personal factors, including psychological qualities and attitude towards the nursing profession; (2) occupational-related behavioral factors, including role-oriented behavior and knowledge-oriented behavior; and (3) work environment and external factors, including external evaluation and perceptions of nurses, time allocation, nursing work tasks, work atmosphere, school education, and perceived supports.ConclusionsThis study found that, although nurses had different personal experiences, their perceptions of professional self-concept were similar. Nurses' professional self-concept is a multidimensional concept and involves various factors, such as personality, work-related characteristics, environment, and family. To thrive in a nursing career, nurses must discern the factors that can enhance or hinder their professional self-concept. By identifying and adjusting these factors, personalized support and positive interventions can be tailored to meet nurses' specific needs, which ultimately nurtures their professional development.Trial registrationThis study was registered on December 14, 2022, in the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry (ChiCTR2200066699) as part of our ongoing study.

Dataset Information

Nurses' perspectives on their communication with patients in busy oncology wards: A qualitative study.

Publications

Nurses' perspectives on their communication with patients in busy oncology wards: A qualitative study.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets