Analysis of communicative behaviour: Profiling roles and activities

OBJECTIVES In this paper we present a method for processing and presentation of data recorded through structured observation of clinicians' information and communication activities. The activities are encoded as sequences of distinctive speech acts, and resulting profiles of communicative behaviour are visualized in radar graphs. Example profiles resulting from the analysis of three clinicians' communicative behaviour during pre-rounds meetings and medication activities are given. METHODS The communicative acts profiles are based on empirical data from an observational study performed at a Norwegian university hospital. A fifth-year medical student spent 20 days in two different hospital wards, following one physician at a time in daily, patient-centred work. The observer recorded the clinicians' information and communication activities during several ward situations such as pre-rounds meetings, ward rounds, and patient discharge. The data was recorded by means of an observation form consisting of a mixture of codes and free-text fields. The recorded data was post-processed by associating each event with one predefined communicative act, and resulting profiles for three individual physicians in different situations have been created as radar graphs. RESULTS/CONCLUSION The approach is an efficient and useful means for studying clinicians' information and communication patterns in hospital wards. The method can be used to illustrate variations among individual clinicians in similar situations and to compare profiles of different roles or hospital wards. Given proper validation, the approach may serve as an important tool to inform the design of new clinical information systems.