JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Digital tools are progressively reshaping the daily work of healthcare professionals in hospitals. While this transformation holds substantial promise, yet it leads to frustrating experiences, raising concerns about negative impacts on clinicians’ well-being.

Objective:

The goal of this study was to comprehensively explore the lived experiences of healthcare professionals navigating digital tools throughout their daily routines.

Methods:

Qualitative in-depth interviews with 52 healthcare professionals representing 24 medical specialties across 14 hospitals in Switzerland were performed.

Results:

Inductive thematic analysis revealed four main themes: digital tool usage, workflow and processes, healthcare professionals’ experience of care delivery, and digital transformation and management of change. Within these themes, six intriguing paradoxes emerged which may partly explain the persistence of the challenges facing hospital digitalization, namely the promise of efficiency and the reality of inefficiency, the shift from face-to-face to interface, juggling frustration and dedication, the illusion of information access and trust, the complexity and intersection of workflows and care paths, and the opportunities and challenges of shadow IT.

Conclusions:

In the light of these paradoxes and the experiences revealed in our study, we developed recommendations to support the transformation of healthcare technology and mitigate negative experiences. These include the need for hospital IT systems to be designed more flexible, adaptable, and lightweight, using open-source infrastructures, considering a phased approach for system upgrades, offering effective IT training, and implementing communication guidelines.