OBJECTIVE: To explore the factors that affect the quality of interactions between nursing personnel and the informal caregivers of people with memory disorders.
METHODS: Systematic review and metasummary of qualitative empirical research.
METHODS: The literature search targeted studies concerning the professional care interactions between nursing personnel and the informal caregivers of people with progressive memory disorders. The search in PubMed, CINAHL, PsycINFO and Scopus covered records from the earliest possible date up to December 2020. The data were summarised using a qualitative metasummary method. Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) checklist was used to validate the reporting process.
RESULTS: Ten articles were included. As presented in 33 statements, the factors affecting the quality of interactions were related to (1) expectations, (2) memory disorders, (3) interaction strategies, (4) time and place of interactions and (5) organisational aspects. Meeting the individual interactional needs of informal caregivers is recommended. The results provide guidance for improving the quality of interactions between nursing personnel and informal caregivers.

Introduction One of the most fundamental aspects of medicine is the doctor-patient relationship. Many factors influenced this link, including socio-cultural patterns, economic levels, political systems, and health systems. In India, there is an increase in violence toward physicians. Almost every now and then, the newspaper comes with headlines about a doctor being abused by patients or their families. Concerns regarding the absence of good doctor-patient communication among Indian doctors prompted an assessment of the current situation. The major purpose of this study is to assess the confidence of tertiary care hospital interns and post-graduates in their communication skills. Materials and methods In May and June 2021, a cross-sectional survey was conducted among all interns and post-graduates from various departments at a tertiary care hospital and research center in Trichy, Tamil Nadu, India. The questions were designed to measure the confidence of physicians\' communication with patients. The Likert scale was used to rate the \"confidence in using\" and \"actual use\" of communication skills with patients, which constitute two sections in our questionnaire. Google forms were used to collect data. The information was then exported to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. SPSS software version 22.0 was used to analyze the data. Results For confidence in their communication skills, the participants obtained a mean score of 2.98 (S.D. = 0.44). Participants obtained an average score of 2.28 (S.D. = 0.89) for practicing confident communication with patients. It was found that persons who had higher confidence levels had a negative correlation (ρ = -0.318) with that during their communication with patients and this was statistically significant (p-value = < 0.001) Conclusion Despite having confident communication skills, medical practitioners in India hardly ever practice them with their patients. This gap must be explored by conducting qualitative studies to address effective communication skills among health professionals.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought with it many hardships to the world as a whole. Mass infection and casualties due to disease state were rampant, which affected many families. Lockdown drove up the incidence of depression and isolated people from their loved ones. The toll on the general population was high, as was the toll on the medical community, a subset of the general population. It was a time of death and devastation, with supply chain issues creating personal protective equipment shortages and staffing being affected by illness, fear, age, and expertise. Despite the constraints, many places were able to rally staff together to provide adequate staffing for healthcare delivery purposes to serve our communities. Cross-specialty collaboration in the outpatient and inpatient setting as well as the use of technology aided our service to our community to help persevere through the many surges of the pandemic and come out with lessons learned as well as reflections.

Early provision of interprofessional education (IPE) is imperative to ensure effective communication between healthcare professionals. However, there are several barriers to offering adequate IPE, including space restrictions and lack of human resources, prompting exploration of alternative modalities. In 2019, an IPE activity was offered in person with 213 pharmacy and 45 physician assistant (PA) students participating in one-on-one team huddles focusing on managing an acutely ill patient. In 2020, the same IPE activity, including 194 pharmacy and 45 PA students, was offered virtually. Peer evaluations, an attitudes survey, and confidence surveys were administered to evaluate the impact of the IPE activity. A student t-test and descriptive statistics were utilized to analyze the data. On average, PA students in the virtual group rated their peers higher than PA students in the in-person group, with little difference in the pharmacy peer evaluation of their PA partner. Ninety percent of pharmacy students and 91% of PA students in the virtual group felt that \"they learned something new regarding therapeutic management\" from their partner versus 84% of pharmacy and 81% of PA students in the in-person group. In conclusion, using a virtual modality for a communications-focused IPE was not detrimental to student attitudes and did not adversely affect peer perceptions.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between emotional intelligence and nurse-nurse collaboration among registered nurses in Jordan.
METHODS: This study used a cross-sectional, quantitative survey design to query 342 nurses who worked in two hospitals in Jordan.
METHODS: We used Arabic versions of valid, reliable instruments to measure emotional intelligence and nurse-nurse communication.
RESULTS: A total of 311 questionnaires were returned (91% response rate). Nurses\' emotional intelligence was positively and significantly correlated with the nurse-nurse collaboration subscales. The results also indicated a statistically significant mean difference in communication subscale scores by gender and nursing unit.
CONCLUSIONS: The present study demonstrated that nurse-nurse collaboration is linked to benefits for nurses in terms of improved job satisfaction, better nurse retention, improved quality of patient care, and enhanced healthcare efficiency and productivity. This suggests that improving nurse-nurse collaboration may have spillover effects of benefits, not only for nurses but for patients, organizations, and the overall healthcare system.
CONCLUSIONS: Building an environment that encourages collaboration among nurses can greatly impact the performance of nurses and its benefit to nurses. Encouraging employees to participate in activities and to collaborate in making this an integral part of their evaluation will contribute to improving the teamwork in patient care.

Classification and scoring systems can help both clinical management and audit outcomes of routine care. The aim of this study was to assess published systems of diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) to determine which should be recommended for a given clinical purpose. Published classifications had to have been validated in populations of > 75% people with diabetes and a foot ulcer. Each study was assessed for internal and external validity and reliability. Eight key factors associated with failure to heal were identified from large clinical series and each classification was scored on the number of these key factors included. Classifications were then arranged according to their proposed purpose into one or more of four groups: (a) aid communication between health professionals, (b) predict clinical outcome of individual ulcers, (c) aid clinical management decision making for an individual case, and (d) audit to compare outcome in different populations. Thirty-seven classification systems were identified of which 18 were excluded for not being validated in a population of >75% DFUs. The included 19 classifications had different purposes and were derived from different populations. Only six were developed in multicentre studies, just 13 were externally validated, and very few had evaluated reliability.Classifications varied in the number (4 - 30), and definition of individual items and the diagnostic tools required. Clinical outcomes were not standardized but included ulcer-free survival, ulcer healing, hospitalization, limb amputation, mortality, and cost. Despite the limitations, there was sufficient evidence to make recommendations on the use of particular classifications for the indications listed above.

WhatsApp is an instant messaging application that has grown in popularity over the last decade. The literature has focused on the use of WhatsApp in medical, surgical and nursing disciplines, with little work exploring pharmacists\' experiences of using WhatsApp to provide services.
The aim of this research was to explore pharmacists\' experiences of using WhatsApp to support delivery of out-of-hours pharmacy services.
A qualitative design was underpinned by a phenomenological philosophy. Focus groups and an extract of the WhatsApp transcript were thematically analysed using NVivo.
Over three hundred communication events (1580 messages) were analysed in the WhatsApp transcript. Message type was classified as follows; handover (26%, n = 410), procedural queries (26%, n = 410), laptop location (18%, n = 284), whole staff communication (24%, n = 379), clinical queries (5%, n = 79), and administrative communications (1%, n = 16). A total of five focus groups were conducted between October and November 2017 with 27 participants that included pharmacists with different levels of experience. The findings suggest that WhatsApp improved communication between junior and senior pharmacists, particularly during the global cyber crisis, and provided an opportunity to share best practice. Concerns were raised regarding the encroachment of work activities into personal time. Additionally, the tacit approval by senior pharmacists to group information sharing and solution development, despite the potential for non-active participation, highlighted the issue of collective complicity.
WhatsApp can be a useful platform to support the delivery of out-of-hours services through professional development, improving communication and supporting relationships. This paper demonstrates that service managers must consider multiple ethico-legal and social frameworks when developing or allowing the organic development of such communication methods within healthcare provider organisations.

Social network analysis quantifies and visualizes relationships between and among individuals or organizations. Applications in the health sector remain underutilized. This systematic review seeks to analyze what social network methods have been used to study professional communication and performance among healthcare providers.
Ten databases were searched from 1990 through April 2016, yielding 5970 articles screened for inclusion by two independent reviewers who extracted data and critically appraised each study. Inclusion criteria were study of health care worker professional communication, network methods used, and patient outcomes measured. The search identified 10 systematic reviews. The final set of articles had their citations prospectively and retrospectively screened. We used narrative synthesis to summarize the findings.
The six articles meeting our inclusion criteria described unique health sectors: one at primary healthcare level and five at tertiary level; five conducted in the USA, one in Australia. Four studies looked at multidisciplinary healthcare workers, while two focused on nurses. Two studies used mixed methods, four quantitative methods only, and one involved an experimental design. Four administered network surveys, one coded observations, and one used an existing survey to extract network data. Density and centrality were the most common network metrics although one study did not calculate any network properties and only visualized the network. Four studies involved tests of significance, and two used modeling methods. Social network analysis software preferences were evenly split between ORA and UCINET. All articles meeting our criteria were published in the past 5 years, suggesting that this remains in clinical care a nascent but emergent research area. There was marked diversity across all six studies in terms of research questions, health sector area, patient outcomes, and network analysis methods.
Network methods are underutilized for the purposes of understanding professional communication and performance among healthcare providers. The paucity of articles meeting our search criteria, lack of studies in middle- and low-income contexts, limited number in non-tertiary settings, and few longitudinal, experimental designs, or network interventions present clear research gaps.
PROSPERO CRD42015019328.

Primary care in remote communities in northern Canada is delivered primarily by nurses who receive clinical support from physicians in regional centres and the patient transportation system. To improve continuity, quality and access to care in remote northern communities, it is important to understand the perspectives of front-line providers and the complex challenges they face.
To design and implement a survey of primary care providers to identify issues relating to inter-professional communication, clinical support and patient evacuation.
In collaboration with the territorial government and regional health authority partners, we developed a 21-item self-administered questionnaire survey, which could be completed online. The survey was sent to 218 physicians and nurses who were employed in the Northwest Territories (NWT) at the time of the survey and were involved in sending patients out of the community and/or receiving patients. The survey also contained an open-ended question at the end seeking comments regarding primary health care.
The overall low response rate of 39% among nurses and 19% among physicians threatens the validity of the quantitative results. The majority of providers were satisfied with their ability to communicate with other providers in a timely manner, their freedom to make clinical decisions and their overall experience practicing in the NWT. The patient transfer system appears to work from both the sender and receiver perspectives. However, a common theme reported by nurses was that physicians providing clinical advice, especially short-term locums, were not familiar with the local situation, whilst physicians at the receiving end remarked that the clinical information provided to them often lacked clarity.
Important lessons were learnt from the pilot study, especially in better engagement of providers in planning and dissemination. The questionnaire design and the online method of delivery were acceptable. Although important issues were identified, a larger definitive survey is needed to investigate them in the future.

OBJECTIVE: To describe how nurses experience caring for people with intellectual disability in an acute care setting.
BACKGROUND: Recent advances in the care of people with intellectual disability in hospital are primarily based upon the experiences of people with intellectual disability and their caregivers. Little is known about the experiences of registered nurses caring for people with intellectual disability, yet the experiences of nurses in delivering care largely determine the quality of care experienced by people with intellectual disability and their caregivers.
METHODS: A narrative literature review using electronic database searches was conducted using variants of the terms disability, nursing and acute care.
RESULTS: Through our reading of the recent literature describing the experiences of nurses caring for people with intellectual disability in an acute care setting, we have identified three themes: (1) nurses feel underprepared when caring for patients with intellectual disability, (2) nurses experience challenges when communicating with people with intellectual disability and (3) nurses have ambiguous expectations of paid and unpaid caregivers.
CONCLUSIONS: The enablers of and barriers to the delivery of nursing care in acute care settings need to be made explicit and researchers and nurses need to collaborate in the development, implementation and evaluation of care delivery strategies.
CONCLUSIONS: Nurses need to be adequately prepared to care for people with intellectual disability. Preparation should include dealing with the complexities of communicating with people with intellectual disability and practical experience of doing so in clinical and educational environments that ensure the safety and dignity of nurses and people with intellectual disability. Nurses need supportive strategies for developing therapeutic relationships with a range of informal and formal caregivers.