BackgroundThere are few studies that examine the processes that interdisciplinary teams engage in and how we can design health information systems (HIS) to support those team processes. This was an exploratory study with two purposes: (1) To develop a framework for interdisciplinary team communication based on structures, processes and outcomes that were identified as having occurred during weekly team meetings. (2) To use the framework to guide 'e-teams' HIS design to support interdisciplinary team meeting communication.MethodsAn ethnographic approach was used to collect data on two interdisciplinary teams. Qualitative content analysis was used to analyze the data according to structures, processes and outcomes.ResultsWe present details for team meta-concepts of structures, processes and outcomes and the concepts and sub concepts within each meta-concept. We also provide an exploratory framework for interdisciplinary team communication and describe how the framework can guide HIS design to support 'e-teams'.ConclusionThe structures, processes and outcomes that describe interdisciplinary teams are complex and often occur in a non-linear fashion. Electronic data support, process facilitation and team video conferencing are three HIS tools that can enhance team function.

Nursing is variously described as a profession, a discipline, an occupation. The meanings we assign to such words and the expectations, demands, and responsibilities that each reveals to and/or exacts from those of us privileged to call ourselves registered nurse provides a splendid arena for viewing the struggle of nursing as an intellectual endeavor embedded in its own distinctive knowledge base, experiences, purposes, and values. Currently, pressure exerted within and without nursing to adopt the self-limiting potential and subordinated position that a professional discipline orientation and applied degree education confer on nursing is mounting. This article examines the relationships among historical events, contemporary influences, and confounding definitions that are integral to how we choose to guide and shape the evolution of nursing scholarship, practice, and education. The authors contend that the full significance of these relationships must be appreciated if nursing is to advance as a scholarly academic discipline and practice profession.

People refer to feeling pulled in different directions as laboring with everyday living of life challenges and opportunities. Guided by concept inventing within a humanbecoming worldview, a now-truth of this phenomenon is that feeling pulled in different directions is visualizing surfaces with spirited longing in a riveting uncertitude of diversions. The ingenuous proclamation was expressed in the language of humanbecoming as imaging the powering valuing of languaging originating and illuminated within the artform Scorned as Timber, Beloved of the Sky by Emily Carr. This exploration contributes to nursing knowledge within the humanbecoming paradigm and offers foci for future inquiry.

No abstract