Conference Proceedings - School of Nursing & Midwifery - Trinity ...

School of Nursing & Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin: 8 th Annual Interdisciplinary Research Conference
Transforming Healthcare Through Research, Education & Technology: 7 th – 9 th November 2007
Conference Proceedings
day period the summer of 2006 to find out their opinions and
perceptions of healthcare communication within the context of
creating a culture of safety. The participants did not see the
questions prior to the interview. The transcripts were sent to a
transcription service in a digital format and returned electronically
as word files. A thematic analysis (Polit & Beck, 2004, pp. 588-589)
was utilized to describe the common communicative patterns found
within the operating room environment and team members, as to
how people relate, respond and interact to and with each other. The
data coding and analysis were triangulated with another researcher
by electronic and verbal communication. Next, by using the
heuristics of the Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM), the
participants’ perceptions are reconstructed to develop images that
represent ideas regarding communication patterns in relation to the
creation of a culture of safety.
To develop the study, a pilot project was designed and
implemented to test the methodology and to craft how to analyze
the data. Through the use of the pilot and seven pilot participants
the interview protocol and study framework proved to be adequate.
The Study Findings
The findings of the study came from the data collection which
transpired at BTMC the summer of 2006. The data collection
involved a panel interview process consisting of seven participants
and a narrative one-to-one interview process encompassing 13
participants who were nurses, physicians, technologists and
nonclinical personnel of the operating room. In particular, the
narrative interviews provided a space for participants to openly
share individual perspectives concerning patient safety and the
affects of current communication interactions between operating
room team members.
The participants spent time discussing the questions within
the context of the medical hierarchy and often brought the
conversations into the realm of the nurse-physician interactions.
And, given my background as a nurse I have centered a majority of
the analysis on the nurse-physician relationship as related to the
nurse role and actual place of the nurse in the medical hierarchy.
Also, the nurse-physician relationship is of importance in trying to
create a culture of safety due to the reality in that the nursephysician
interaction is a prominent factor in the healthcare delivery
process.
Typology
To start the concept of the analysis I designed a typology to
create an initial structure of my thoughts regarding healthcare
- 337 -