Sammendrag
Health personnel working in hospitals must constantly relate to enormous amounts of information. Consequently there is constantly a lot of work going on to improve communication and information practices, including designing computerized information systems. In Norwegian hospitals such systems, e.g. electronic patient records (EPR) and decision support systems, have now become widespread. Despite such efforts to enhance information routines, health personnel still experience difficulties gaining access to the necessary and up to date information in an easy way. I participate in a multidisciplinary group aiming at specifying a Mobile Electronic Patient Record unit, which supports cooperative patient-focused work. The intention is to equip health personnel with their personal palm, hence always up to date on patient information. At the same time the palm may limit face-to-face communication and thus limit disturbances during the working day, an effect that may be considered positive. To discover current information and communication practices at the hospital, a 4-months period of participant observation was conducted, particularly following physicians during their working day. This paper explores parts of the information and communication practices they are engaged in. In many situations a palm, containing up to date patient data, seems like a most useful tool. At the same time meetings and ad hoc encounters, face-to-face conversations and telephone calls have other important unintended functions than strictly sharing patient information. One point is that the conversation itself is a dynamic process. Answers may trigger new questions and so on; hence new information and new knowledge is unintentionally produced. The use of body language is also something to bear in mind. Body language may in several occasions be more expressive than numbers and words for showing patient symptoms. Furthermore, there also exist other forms of info besides patient info, which are more difficult to implement in a computer system.
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