Integrating IT in health care work

Project - context Usage of IT / how do we make IT workable in (organisational) context. Health care / nursing Introduction of the electronic nurses documentation in a hospital ward

Project - motivation EPR integrate poorly with specialized information systems and health care practice (kvalis-project, Melby 2004, Lærum, Ellingsen and Faxvaag 2002) Paper and oral representations still preferred as medium for communicating information (Melby 2004, Fitzpatrick 2000)

In practice there is......no such thing as the patient record...a jungle of different representations...paper is still preferred over electronic based information systems, and oral communication is the most common way to share information ==> knowledge about patients is distributed among several (people and tools/artefacts)

Overall Objective (1) Better understanding of the practical accomplishment of work to help design systems that better fit work. How technologies and artefacts blend into work activities Going beyond the concrete representational aspects of the artefacts

Research objectives (1) Main research question What is health care work and how well do different representations (tools, applications, etc) integrate with different work activities in a hospital? Sub-questions What types of representations of patients are created and used within different communities of practices in a hospital (or at a ward in a hospital)? How are these representations created (drawing on different sources of information)?

Research objectives (2) Sub-questions (cont) How do these representations promote collaboration? How do representations interact with people? How do the representations characterize a particular practice and why? How are these representations used across different communities of practices and what role do they play within communities?

The Case Hospital ward Project on electronic based nursing documentation Typical patient being admitted is suffering from a chronic disease (requires extensive, cooperative and inter-disciplinary collaboration) Electronic Patient Records (EPR) has been introduced but still not used extensively

Method

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