Nurses often have stressful work environments. This paper presents a study that investigate if and how an intelligent phone communication system, CallMeSmart, designed for use in hospitals affects and improves the communication and information flow between nurses. The empirical material has been collected through a multi-method research approach using both quantitative and qualitative data. The data were from phone logs, six individual face-to-face interviews supported by a short questionnaire, a focus group interview, and informal discussions. The results have been summarized in two main themes. One theme covered positive experiences. The nurses liked the dedicated phone system, and they gave many examples of how the system could facilitate communication and information flow in their work practice. The second theme covered negative experiences, and includes problems they experienced when they were using the technology. Our conclusion is that this dedicated phone system has a great potential in facilitating hospital communication. However, the condition to realize this potential, is that the problems that were registered are resolved.
hospital communication systems, context awareness, nursing, e-health, work practice, implementing ict, smart phones in hospitals, work efficiency
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