Home Care Nurses at the Heart of the Communication Web: Communication Synchronicity and Effects on the Psychosocial Work Environment

Overview

Journal Glob Qual Nurs Res

Publisher Sage Publications

Specialty Nursing

Date 2024 Sep 30

PMID 39347475

Authors

Roger Larsson

Gudbjorg Erlingsdottir

Johanna Persson

Christofer Rydenfalt

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

This qualitative study explores how communication practice affects Swedish home care nurses' psychosocial work environment. Data consisted of interviews and field observations, analyzed from the perspective of Media Synchronicity Theory and the Job-Demand-Control-Support model. Individual home care nurses were found to manage an interorganizational communication web. The results indicated that this web could have a protective function for the nurses. Synchronous communication was found important to control the work situation. Nevertheless, asynchronous communication was enforced when communicating with other health care organizations. This reduced the level of control for the nurses. However, when possible, the nurses also arranged their communication practice to gain control. Thus, local optimization for one group could result in suboptimization for others. We conclude that communication practice should be designed holistically and promote synchronous communication to foster well-functioning interprofessional teamwork and to create a healthy psychosocial work environment for both home care nurses and their collaborators.

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