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. 2019 Dec 17;7(2):634-641.
doi: 10.1002/nop2.434. eCollection 2020 Mar.

Cooperation and conflict in intra-hospital transfers: A qualitative analysis

Hayley D Germack  1   2 , Renee Fekieta  3 , Meredith Campbell Britton  4 , Shelli L Feder  5 , Alana Rosenberg  6 , Sarwat I Chaudhry  7
Affiliations

Cooperation and conflict in intra-hospital transfers: A qualitative analysis

Hayley D Germack et al. Nurs Open. .

Abstract

Aim: The purpose of this study was to explore the latent conditions of cooperation and conflict in intra-hospital patient transfers (i.e. transfers of patients between units in a hospital).

Design: Secondary qualitative analysis of 28 interviews conducted with 29 hospital staff, including physicians (N = 13), nurses (N = 10) and support staff (N = 6) from a single, large academic tertiary hospital in the Northeastern United States.

Methods: A two-member multidisciplinary team applied a directed content analysis approach to data collected from semi-structured interviews.

Results: Three recurrent themes were generated: (a) patient flow policies created imbalances of power; (b) relationships were helpful to facilitate safe transfers; and (c) method of admission order communication was a source of disagreement. Hospital quality improvement efforts could benefit from a teaming approach to minimize unintentional power imbalances and optimize communicative relationships between units.

Keywords: care transfers; intra‐hospital transfers; multidisciplinary; qualitative study; quality improvement.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest to disclose.

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