As nurses' communication is essential to prevent, intercept, and resolve medical mistakes, it is important to understand how they learn to communicate about medical errors. In this study, we identify memorable messages about communicating about mistakes that nursing students receive during their training and how they make sense of these messages. Data were acquired through individual interviews with 68 nursing students. The data were analyzed using a thematic constant comparative method. While open and honest communication about medical errors was the overarching message participants formally and informally learned, for nursing students, communicating about medical errors is a much more complex process than using open and honest communication. When dealing with medical errors, nursing students relied on three major memorable messages to guide their communication: (a) Not everyone hears about errors, (b) hierarchy matters, and
Two studies ( N = 621) were conducted to develop and initially validate the Communication Apprehension About Death Scale (CADS). In Study 1, 302 general public participants completed a preliminary list of 66 items. An exploratory factor analysis identified two distinct dimensions of communication apprehension about death: communication anxiety and communication avoidance. A different group of participants ( n = 319) participated in Study 2. Participants in Study 2 completed the CADS measure, a fear of death measure, and a general communication apprehension measure. Concurrent validity support was provided through the significant positive correlations between communication apprehension about death and fear of death as well as communication apprehension about death and general communication apprehension. Collectively, the results suggest that the CADS is a reliable and valid self-report measure of communication apprehension about death. We conclude with a discussion of the findings as well as future directions needed to more critically examine CADS.
Following the death of a child, parents are turning to alternative means of communication to express their grief In this instrumental case study, the authors explore how 1 woman, Amy Ambrusko, communicates her grief experience on her blog, emotionally negotiating loss and parental grief. Guided by M. S. Miles's (1984) parental grief model, the authors argue that the Callapitter blog serves as a case study illustration of online parental grief. Specifically, Ambrusko displays parental grief in three ways: (re)questioning reality, experiencing discursive and corporeal guilt, and rationalizing a "new normal." This analysis highlights the changing nature of communicating about grief and underscores how grief blogs challenge contemporary social death rules.
The ways providers story their mistake experiences help to explain how providers understand medical errors and how they communicate about those errors. Communication scholars have slowly begun to explore the communicative nature of medical error experiences, with communication research becoming more abundant over the past few years. Missing from this discussion is how students in health professions, in this case nursing students, tell medical errors narratives and how the stories help them determine how to respond to mistakes. In this article, we explore how nursing students narrativize their medical errors experiences during clinicals. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 68 nursing students. The interviews were transcribed and resulted in a total of 1,261 single-spaced pages of data. We found that nursing students told three different narratives: (a) the "save the day" narrative, (b) the "silence" narrative, and (c) the "not always right" narrative. Finally, we discuss the implications of these narratives and their impact on nursing education.
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