Home care nurses at the heart of the communication web: communication synchronicity and effects on the psychosocial work environment

This qualitative study explores how communication practice affects Swedish home care nurses’ psychosocial work environ-ment. Data consisted of interviews and field observations, analyzed from the perspective of Media Synchronicity Theoryand the Job-Demand-Control-Support model. Individual home care nurses were found to manage an interorganizationalcommunication web. The results indicated that this web could have a protective function for the nurses. Synchronouscommunication was found important to control the work situation. Nevertheless, asynchronous communication wasenforced when communicating with other health care organizations. This reduced the level of control for the nurses.However, when possible, the nurses also arranged their communication practice to gain control. Thus, local optimizationfor one group could result in suboptimization for others. We conclude that communication practice should be designedholistically and promote synchronous communication to foster well-functioning interprofessional teamwork and to createa healthy psychosocial work environment for both home care nurses and their collaborators.