Toward Nurses' Transformative Agency in Transitional Care for Older Adults: A Change-Laboratory Intervention.

Mobilization of nurses' agency across healthcare sectors is needed to counter challenges associated with older adults' transitions between hospital and primary care. Based on Cultural Historical Activity theory and the Change Laboratory method, we developed a learning intervention with 16 nurses. The aim was to foster the nurses' transformative agency to improve care. Video-recording of nine learning sessions were transcribed and analyzed. Results demonstrated that shared transformative agency exhibited as an emergent phenomenon crossing sectoral boundaries as a prerequisite for change in transitional care. The nurses progressed from acting as individuals criticizing the current conditions to collectively forming a vision around a transitional care model. This was nurtured through the nurses' negotiations which included a recognition of sharing similar challenges deriving from the healthcare organization and related financial restrictions, and conflicting healthcare and nursing ideals across healthcare sectors. The evolution of transformative agency was grounded in a professional nursing identity.

Det er nødvendigt at mobilisere sygeplejerskers ejerskab for udvikling på tværs af sundhedssektorer for at imødegå udfordringer i ældre medicinske patienters overgange mellem hospital og primærsektor. Med udgangspunkt i virksomhedsteori og Change Laboratory metoden udviklede vi en læringsintervention for 16 sygeplejersker. Formålet var at fremme sygeplejerskernes transformative ejerskab for at kunne forbedre sygeplejen. Vi transskriberede og analyserede videooptagelser af ni læringssessioner. Resultaterne viste et spirende fælles transformativt ejerskab blandt sygeplejerskerne på tværs af sektorer som en forudsætning for at kunne forandre den tværsektorielle pleje. Sygeplejerskerne gjorde fremskridt idet de flyttede sig fra at give individuel kritik af forholdende, til at samarbejde om at skabe en fælles vision for pleje ved overgange.Fremskridtet opstod, fordi sygeplejerskerne erkendte, at de på tværs af sektorer delte de samme udfordringer, som er forårsaget af organiseringen af sundhedsvæsenet og økonomiske begrænsninger samt modstridende idealer mellem sundhedsvæsenet og sygeplejeidealer på tværs af sundhedssektorer. Udviklingen af sygeplejerskernes transformerende ejerskab var forankret i en sygeplejefaglig professionsidentitet.

Systemic contradictions as causes to challenges in nurses' transitional care: A change laboratory intervention.

BACKGROUND: Transitional care involves coordination of care for patients transitioning between primary care and hospital care. This necessitates collaboration with patients, health professionals and organizations with different goals for patient care. This can result in fragmented patient care pathways. Education of health professionals is a means to improve transitional care. We therefore developed a learning intervention in order to enable nurses to develop transitional care. OBJECTIVE: The objective was to understand how participants identified needs for development can improve transitional care. DESIGN: The design was that of a formative intervention design based on Cultural Historical Activity Theory. SETTING: A regional hospital and a primary care department in a municipality in Denmark. PARTICIPANTS: Nine health professionals from primary care services and seven health professionals from hospital services. METHOD: The change laboratory method and the principle of double stimulation guided the facilitation of the learning intervention, which consisted of nine learning sessions (from May to October 2019). A quantitative and qualitative analytical framework was used for data analysis. RESULTS: The participants identified needs for development, including a wish to involve patients and their next of kin more and to emphasise relational care. Participants developed an appreciation of challenges concerning collaboration between nurses and the formation of nursing practice. Furthermore, participants began to view challenges as caused by a systemic contradiction between nurses' preoccupation with bureaucratic and managerial demands and patients' expectations of coherent care in transitional care. CONCLUSION: The process of understanding challenges enabled the participants to change their perception from a need to solve problems as they appear on the surface to a need to address underlying systemic contradictions. This possibly has far-reaching consequences for long-term processes underpinning the development of practice and may serve as an alternative to expedient problem solving.

Being cross pressured-parents' experiences of the transfer from paediatric to adult care services for their young people with long term conditions: A systematic review and qualitative research synthesis.

BACKGROUND: Family members of young people (13-24 years) with long-term conditions tend to experience multiple challenges when their children transfer from paediatric to adult care, as do the patients themselves. OBJECTIVES: To identify, interpret and theoretically conceptualise the meaning of parents' experiences of the transfer from paediatric to adult care of their young people with long-term conditions. DESIGN: A qualitative research synthesis. DATA SOURCES: We obtained articles from Medline, CINAHL, PsycINFO, EMBASE, Scopus, and Web of Science. Unpublished theses and dissertations were searched for using Google Scholar, Mednar, and ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. REVIEW METHODS: Based on a previously published protocol, we followed the guidelines from the Joanna Briggs Institute. Sandelowski and Barroso's qualitative research synthesis approach guided the metasynthesis. Articles published between 1999 and March 2019 were systematically searched for. FINDINGS: Twenty-three reports from seven Western countries representing 454 parents including significant others such as aunts and grandparents of 462 young people with various diagnoses contributed to the review. 'Being cross-pressured' was the metasynthesis found to reflect parents' experiences of the transfer from paediatric to adult care of their young people with long-term conditions. The metasynthesis comprised four themes: 'Fluctuating between parental roles', 'Navigating contrasting healthcare contexts', 'Making decisions in the face of inner conflict', and 'Trusting their child's self-management ability'. CONCLUSIONS: Our metasynthesis finding of parents' experiences of being cross-pressured provides a new way of thinking about the study phenomena which is supported by transitions theory holding that multiple transitions can take place simultaneously involving myriads of concurrent and conflicting demands. The cross pressure may overwhelm parents. The clinical implications are to recognise parents' experiences and distress in healthcare planning to promote safe and predicable transfers of their young people. Provision of healthcare to parents during transfer needs to be tailored to a collaborative decision-making process between parents, their young people, and involved practitioners across paediatric and adult healthcare services. Tweetable abstract: Parents experienced being cross-pressured when their young people with long-term conditions were transferred from paediatric to adult care.

Parents' experiences of neonatal transfer. A meta-study of qualitative research 2000-2017.

Transfers of critically ill neonates are frequent phenomena. Even though parents' participation is regarded as crucial in neonatal care, a transfer often means that parents and neonates are separated. A systematic review of the parents' experiences of neonatal transfer is lacking. This paper describes a meta-study addressing qualitative research about parents' experiences of neonatal transfer. Through deconstruction and reflections of theories, methods, and empirical data, the aim was to achieve a deeper understanding of theoretical, empirical, contextual, historical, and methodological issues of qualitative studies concerning parents' experiences of neonatal transfer over the course of this meta-study (2000-2017). Meta-theory and meta-method analyses showed that caring, transition, and family-centered care were main theoretical frames applied and that interviewing with a small number of participants was the preferred data collection method. The meta-data-analysis showed that transfer was a scary, unfamiliar, and threatening experience for the parents; they were losing familiar context, were separated from their neonate, and could feel their parenthood disrupted. We identified 'wavering and wandering' as a metaphoric representation of the parents' experiences. The findings add knowledge about meta-study as an approach for comprehensive qualitative research and point at the value of meta-theory and meta-method analyses.

Experiences of living kidney donors during the donation process.

BACKGROUND: The shortage of organs from deceased donors has led to more living donation. Furthermore, immunological developments have made it possible to perform kidney transplantation despite preformed antibodies against the donor organ. This has led to a broader recruitment base of living donors. OBJECTIVE: The objective was to investigate experiences and considerations on becoming, and during the process of being, a living kidney donor. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Interviews and participant observation were conducted before, during and after the donation. Data were analysed in accordance with Ricoeur's theory of interpretation on three levels: naïve reading, structural analysis and critical interpretation and discussion. Eighteen potential donors over the age of 18 were included. RESULTS: Potential donors' decision to donate was based on a desire to help the recipient. At all stages of the process, donors experienced joy, dilemmas, vulnerability and hope. Rejected donors experienced frustration and disappointment. The accepted donors experienced both joy and vulnerability. Interaction between the donor and the recipient and the relatives played a significant role. The transition from being a healthy individual to being a surgical patient was an overwhelming experience. CONCLUSION: The process of donating a kidney and the return to everyday life involved significant experiences of joy, dilemmas, vulnerability and hope that influenced donors' lives on physical, psychological and social levels. Support and clear communication from the health professionals was essential.

Experiences of the home-dwelling elderly in the use of telecare in home care services: a qualitative systematic review protocol.

REVIEW QUESTION/OBJECTIVE: The objective of this systematic review is to identify and synthesize the best evidence on the home-dwelling elderly's experiences with the use of telecare in home care services. Furthermore, the study will identify experiences with telecare devices and examine what beliefs the home-dwelling elderly hold regarding the impact of telecare on the ability to age in place.Review question 1: How do the home-dwelling elderly experience the use of telecare in the context of home care services?Review question 2: How do the home-dwelling elderly experience telecare devices?Review question 3: What beliefs do the home-dwelling elderly hold regarding the impact of telecare on the ability to age in place?

Using Sandelowski and Barroso's Meta-Synthesis Method in Advancing Qualitative Evidence.

The purpose of this article was to iteratively account for and discuss the handling of methodological challenges in two qualitative research syntheses concerning patients' experiences of hospital transition. We applied Sandelowski and Barroso's guidelines for synthesizing qualitative research, and to our knowledge, this is the first time researchers discuss their methodological steps. In the process, we identified a need for prolonged discussions to determine mutual understandings of the methodology. We discussed how to identify the appropriate qualitative research literature and how to best conduct exhaustive literature searches on our target phenomena. Another finding concerned our status as third-order interpreters of participants' experiences and what this meant for synthesizing the primary findings. Finally, we discussed whether our studies could be classified as metasummaries or metasyntheses. Although we have some concerns regarding the applicability of the methodology, we conclude that following Sandelowski and Barroso's guidelines contributed to valid syntheses of our studies.