Extended communication possibilities for nurses: taking context into consideration

Due to the versatile nature of nurses' work, whether contact requests can be initiated or received depends on the situation the nurses find themselves in. Through a qualitative study influenced by the participatory design methodology, we uncover issues with a communication system at a hospital when nurses are situated in different contexts. Based on the findings, we suggest a new system design where nurses can initiate and receive contact requests on a heterogeneous set of devices. Further, we argue that the new system should allow communication of context information to aid nurses to assert whether to engage in a communication request or not.