Aim: This concept analysis aims to describe and define interprofessional communication within healthcare contexts by synthesising empirical evidence and existing literature.

Design: Utilising Schwartz-Barcott and Kim´s hybrid model, the study integrates theoretical exploration with empirical data analysis.

Methods: A comprehensive literature review and dictionary references inform the selection of theoretical frameworks. Data collection involves screening articles from databases including CINAHL, PSYCHINFO, WEB OF SCIENCE, SCOPUS, and PUBMED, resulting in 37 articles for review. Secondary analysis includes observational studies and focus groups conducted in psychiatric outpatient units, integrating theoretical and empirical insights for a nuanced understanding of communication complexities in healthcare settings.

Results: Theoretical exploration reveals the multifaceted nature of interprofessional communication, emphasising information sharing, collaboration, and decision-making. Antecedents, including education, logistical challenges, legal frameworks, and cultural dynamics, are identified. Empirical findings underline the importance of competence, curiosity, trust, cooperation, and clarity in communication. Influential factors such as leadership, cultural understanding, informal communication, transparency, and hierarchy emerge.

Conclusions: The synthesis highlights the central role of communication in healthcare and emphasises its impact on outcomes. Addressing communication barriers and promoting facilitators is important to supportive work environments and patient safety. Further research is necessary to deepen understanding and improve communication effectiveness in health care.

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into healthcare, particularly through generative AI models like ChatGPT, presents both transformative opportunities and significant challenges. This discussion article explores the systemic impacts of generative AI, highlighting the ethical concerns, particularly around biases, and the shifts in patient-provider dynamics that could disrupt traditional healthcare. Democratising medical knowledge through ChatGPT tools offers new avenues for patient engagement, yet it may affect existing health disparities and erode trust if not responsibly implemented. As generative AI increasingly influences healthcare, it is critical to recognise the intricate feedback loops and dependencies within these complex adaptive systems so that innovations augment rather than destabilise the overall structure. This article advocates an ‘embrace with caution’ stance, calling for reflexive governance, heightened ethical oversight, and a nuanced appreciation of systemic complexity to harness generative AI’s benefits while preserving the integrity of healthcare delivery.

Background

The outcomes of staff training programs regarding the effect of person-centered care in nursing homes as rated by their residents are limited. This study examines the effects of a nursing home training program by evaluating resident-rated person-centered care, comparing changes over time between an intervention group and a comparison group.

Methods

This quasi-experimental study was conducted in 25 nursing homes. A total of 124 residents in the intervention group and 65 in the comparison group were enrolled between August 2021 and June 2023. Data were collected using the ‘Person-centered Climate-Questionnaire-Patient version’ (twice, pre- and post-intervention). The two-year training program comprised knowledge and skills in quality of care through lectures, seminars, and skill practice among 15 managers and frontline staff members in nursing homes. These staff members were expected to implement what they had learned and diffuse their knowledge to their coworkers at their nursing homes. An ANCOVA analysis was performed with a significance level of p ≤ 0.05.

Results

Among the residents, the person-centered scores were statistically significant (p < 0.001). The intervention group scores improved over time (mean = 13.6, SD = 20.0), whereas the comparison group declined (mean=-5.9, SD = 24.6).

Conclusion

The program was associated with improvements in person-centered climate as rated by residents. These findings highlight the clinical importance of training programs, including knowledge and skills in person-centered care, dementia care, teamwork, staff empowerment, and psychological nursing care, is central for improving person-centered care for nursing home residents.

Trial registrationChictr.org.cnChiCTR2100048628. Registered July 12, 2021.

Interprofessional communication is fundamental in healthcare, particularly where patient needs demand coordination and shared understanding. It fosters role clarity, care coordination, and team cohesion. However, unclear hierarchies, heavy workloads, and interpersonal conflicts can disrupt collaboration, affecting professional relationships and patient outcomes. This study explores experiences of and reflections on prerequisites for and barriers to interprofessional communication in psychiatric outpatient settings. While previous research has described barriers, few studies have examined how communication itself constitutes professional roles, boundaries, and collaborative practices. To address this gap, the study applies the Four Flows framework—membership negotiation, self-structuring, activity coordination, and institutional positioning—as an interpretive lens. Using vignettes and semi-structured interviews with 11 clinicians in psychiatric outpatient units, the study analyzed how communication shapes and is shaped by interprofessional collaboration. Analysis identified four key categories: systemic barriers and organizational challenges; social dynamics and interprofessional relationships; supportive leadership and team culture; and patient focus and involvement. These categories intersect across the Four Flows, illustrating how communication acts as a structuring process rather than a neutral tool. The overarching theme,” From Separate Paths to Shared Care,” highlights how clinicians enact person-centered collaboration through communicative practice in psychiatric outpatient settings.

Loneliness is a multifaceted phenomenon linked to adverse mental and physical health outcomes, increasingly understood as a relationally embedded experience shaped by sociocultural, cognitive, and emotional factors. While previous research has predominantly relied on surveys and clinical tools, emerging approaches recognize the value of unsolicited narratives shared on digital platforms. This snapshot study examines 498 Reddit posts from the subforums r/lonely and r/offmychest, using a publicly available annotated dataset to examine perceived causes and intensities of loneliness. Each post was annotated for types of loneliness cause and rated for intensity on a five-point scale. Descriptive statistics characterized the annotated dataset, and inferential analyses examined relationships among labels within this sample. Lack of friends emerged as the most frequently identified cause, whereas lack of family contact was associated with the highest perceived intensity. Co-occurring deficits across relational domains were common, particularly between lack of friends and lack of social support. Differences by subreddit and annotation batch were observed descriptively but were not statistically significant. These findings underscore the contextual, multi-causal nature of loneliness and support the value of Reddit as a site for accessing emotionally rich, real-time disclosures. Implications for mental health nursing include allocating space within assessments to explore relational complexity, drawing on patients’ digital narratives when they emerge.

Communication in healthcare extends beyond patient care, impacting the work environment and job satisfaction. Interprofessional communication is essential for fostering collaboration, but challenges arise from differences in training, roles, and hierarchies. The study aimed to explore psychiatric outpatient clinicians’ experiences of interprofessional communication and their perceptions of how the communication intersects the organizational and social work environment of healthcare. Qualitative research involved focus group interviews with clinicians from five psychiatric outpatient units in Central Sweden, representing diverse professions. The authors analyzed semi-structured interview data thematically to uncover clinicians’ perspectives on interprofessional communication. An overarching theme, “Adjustment of communication,” with subthemes “Synchronized communication” and “Dislocated communication,” emerged. Clinicians adapted communication strategies based on situations and needs, with synchronized communication promoting collaboration and dislocated communication hindering it. Communicating with each other was highly valued, as it contributed to a positive work environment. The study underscores the importance of an open, supportive environment that fosters trust, and respect among healthcare clinicians. Consistent with prior research, collaboration gaps underscore the urgent need to improve interprofessional communication.

We present an interdisciplinary exploration of technostress in knowledge-intensive organizations, including both business and healthcare settings, and its impact on a healthy working life. Technostress, a contemporary form of stress induced by information and communication technology, is associated with reduced job satisfaction, diminished organizational commitment, and adverse patient care outcomes. This article aims to construct an innovative framework, called The Integrated Technostress Resilience Framework, designed to mitigate technostress and promote continuous learning within dynamic organizational contexts. In this perspective article we incorporate a socio-technical systems approach to emphasize the complex interplay between technological and social factors in organizational settings. The proposed framework is expected to provide valuable insights into the role of transparency in digital technology utilization, with the aim of mitigating technostress. Furthermore, it seeks to extend information systems theory, particularly the Technology Acceptance Model, by offering a more nuanced understanding of technology adoption and use. Our conclusion includes considerations for the design and implementation of information systems aimed at fostering resilience and adaptability in organizations undergoing rapid technological change.

Background

Older people hospitalized for COVID-19 are a vulnerable group due to the disease itself, aging and often loss of hearing and vision. Person-centered care, where patients have opportunities to communicate and participate in their own care, is important. However, because healthcare staff needed to wear personal protective equipment during the pandemic, to protect the patients and themselves, providing person-centered care was often difficult. This study aims to describe older hospitalized patients’ experiences both of being cared for, while having COVID-19, and of the care provided by healthcare staff wearing PPE.

Methods

Fourteen older patients, over 65 years of age, were interviewed, and the data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The study adhered to Consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research guidelines.

Results

Three subthemes and one overall theme, “The desire for survival overshadows difficulties”, emerged in the analysis. The main findings revealed that the older hospitalized patients experienced the care they received from the healthcare staff as satisfactory. The older patients reported understanding and accepting that the pandemic situation meant that their ability to participate in their own care and communicate with healthcare staff were given lower priority.

Conclusions

Older hospitalized patients need to be provided person-centered care, and situations such as a pandemic are no exception. Care tasks that are not acute in nature, e.g., planning for patients’ return home, could be conducted by healthcare staff not required to wear PPE.

Background

Communication in healthcare has been extensively studied, but most research has focused on miscommunication and the importance of communication for patient safety. Previous research on interprofessional communication has mainly focused on relationships between physicians and nurses in non-psychiatric settings. Since communication is one of the core competencies in psychiatric care, more research on interprofessional communication between other clinicians is needed, and should be explored from a broader perspective. This study aimed to explore and describe interprofessional communication in a psychiatric outpatient unit.

Method

During spring 2022, data consisting of over 100 h of fieldwork were collected from observations, formal semi-structured interviews and informal conversations inspired by the focused ethnography method. Data was collected at an outpatient unit in central Sweden, and various clinicians participated in the study. The data analysis was a back-and-forth process between initial codes and emerging themes, but also cyclical as the data analysis process was ongoing and repeated and took place simultaneously with the data collection.

Results

We found that a workplace’s history, clinicians´ workload, responsibilities and hierarchies influence interprofessional communication. The results showed that the prerequisites for interprofessional communication were created through the unit’s code of conduct, clear and engaging leadership, and trust in the ability of the various clinicians to perform new tasks.

Conclusion

Our results indicate that leadership, an involving working style, and an environment where speaking up is encouraged and valued can foster interprofessional communication and respect for each other´s professional roles is key to achieving this. Interprofessional communication between different clinicians is an important part of psychiatric outpatient work, where efficiency, insufficient staffing and long patient queues are commonplace. Research can help shed light on these parts by highlighting aspects influencing communication.

In many countries, most organic waste is usually placed in landfills, which generates public concern about the health effects of emissions pollutants. The natural bacterial decomposition of organic waste produces landfill gases, about half of the methane, with the remainder mainly carbon dioxide and minor amounts of other gases. Real-time measurement and modeling of emissions gases in landfills are essential. This work develops a low-cost wireless measurement system using MOS gas sensors (MQ4, MQ5, and MQ9), a 32 bits microcontroller, an XBee module, and HC-12 wireless communications modules. The system can be mounted on an uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV, drone) or deployed as a wireless sensor network. Experiments have been carried out near a closed landfill, and measurement results show high methane concentrations.