Supporting operating nurses´ collaborative work: Preventing information overload and tailoring information access

Collaboration and coordination are demanding tasks in health care, but may be supported by computer systems. In this paper we describe our initial work in a large research project (Cooperation Support Through Transparency). The aim is to provide actors with information about the course of a process, thereby facilitating informed decisions and in such way support collaboration in peri-operative processes. The focus in this paper is on operating nurses´ current use of information resources and their information needs. He use a combination of semi-structured interviews and participant observation. Theoretically, our analyses are informed by e.g. the concepts awareness and articulation work. The study shows that this combination of methods is most useful, offering complementary insights and drawing an attention to mismatches between what is said and what is done by nurses. Furthermore, based on the empirical material, we discuss implications for design.