Framing healthcare professionals in written adverse events: A discourse analysis
File version
Version of Record (VoR)
Author(s)
Henoch, Ingela
Lepp, Margret
Ulin, Kerstin
Griffith University Author(s)
Primary Supervisor
Other Supervisors
Editor(s)
Date
Size
File type(s)
Location
Abstract
Healthcare professionals have a major responsibility to protect patients from harm. Despite vast efforts to decrease the number of adverse events, the progression of patient safety has internationally been acknowledged as slow. From a social construction perspective, it has been argued that the understanding of patient safety is contextual based on historical and structural rules, and that this meaning construction points out different directions of possible patient safety actions. By focusing on fact construction and its productive and limiting effect on how something can be understood, we explored the discourses about healthcare professionals in 29 written reports of adverse events as reported by patients, relatives, and healthcare professionals. Through the analysis, a discourse about the healthcare professionals as experts was found. The expert role most dominantly included an understanding that adverse events were identified through physical signs and that patient safety could be prevented by more strictly following routines and work procedures. We drew upon the conclusion that these regimes of truth brought power to the expert discourse, to the point that it became difficult for patients and relatives to engage in patient safety actions on their terms.
Journal Title
Nursing Inquiry
Conference Title
Book Title
Edition
Volume
Issue
Thesis Type
Degree Program
School
Publisher link
Patent number
Funder(s)
Grant identifier(s)
Rights Statement
Rights Statement
© 2021 The Authors. Journal of Cardiovascular Electrophysiology Published by Wiley Periodicals LLC. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial‐NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non‐commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
Item Access Status
Note
This publication has been entered in Griffith Research Online as an advanced online version.
Access the data
Related item(s)
Subject
Nursing
adverse event
adverse healthcare event
discourse analysis
healthcare professionals
patient safety
Persistent link to this record
Citation
Gyberg, A; Henoch, I; Lepp, M; Ulin, K, Framing healthcare professionals in written adverse events: A discourse analysis, Nursing Inquiry, 2021, pp. e12461