Julie Apker

• PhD, Communication
• Professor (Associate) at Western Michigan University

Handoffs, also known as handovers, signovers, signouts, or endorsements, refer to transfer of care responsibilities that occur when patients transition between clinicians either within the same health organization or among different health organizations. Intraservice handoffs occur between clinicians of the same profession whereas interservice hand...

This study explores how coping and social support assist students in managing communication stressors with two key academic groups─instructors and classmates─during COVID-19. Undergraduates (N = 70) provided open-ended responses of how they cope with stressful interactions. Grounded, iterative analysis reveals two themes. First, students use proble...

The current and anticipated shortage of primary care providers (PCPs) has increased scholarly and health system leader attention on how to attract and retain qualified PCPs. To date, the research literature in medicine and in health communication has not fully considered the ways in which role communication may shape PCP engagement. Drawing upon ro...

Nurses function as central figures of health teams, coordinating direct care and communication between team members, patients, and their families. The importance of nurses to health care cannot be understated, but neither can the environmental struggles nurses routinely encounter in their jobs. Organizational communication and nursing scholarship s...

When transferring patient care responsibilities across the healthcare continuum, clinicians strive to communicate safely and effectively, but communication failures exist that threaten patient safety. Although researchers are making great strides in understanding and solving intraservice handoff problems, inter-service transition communication rema...

ACADEMIC EMERGENCY MEDICINE 2012; 19:1188–1195 © 2012 by the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine Abstract Patient care transitions across specialties involve more complexity than those within the same specialty, yet the unique social and technical features remain underexplored. Further, little consensus exists among researchers and practitione...

Nurses occupy a central position in today’s increasingly collaborative health care teams that place a premium on quality patient care. In this study we examined critical team processes and identified specific nurse—team communication practices that were perceived by team members to enhance patient outcomes. Fifty patient-care team members were inte...

We develop and evaluate the Handoff Communication Assessment, using actual handoffs of patient transfers from emergency department to inpatient care. This was an observational qualitative study. We derived a Handoff Communication Assessment tool, using categories from discourse coding described in physician-patient communication, previous handoff r...

Enhanced team communication may strengthen nurses' attachment to their organizations and teams and improve nurse retention. This study examines the relationships among nurse-team communication, identification (organizational and team), and intent to leave. Hospital nurses (N = 201) completed surveys measuring 3 nurse-team communication processes: p...

To identify the perceptions of emergency physicians (EPs) and hospitalists regarding interservice handoff communication as patients are transferred from the emergency department to the inpatient setting. Investigators conducted individual interviews with 12 physicians (six EPs and six hospitalists). Data evaluation consisted of using the steps of c...

This study explored how nurses communicate professionalism in interactions with members of their health care teams. Extant research show that effective team communication is a vital aspect of a positive nursing practice environment, a setting that has been linked to enhanced patient outcomes. Although communication principles are emphasized in nurs...

As central figures in the healthcare team, nurses encounter a wide range of role expectations that increasingly require heightened interpersonal communication skills. Role dialectics, a construct integrating role theory and relational dialectics scholarship, is introduced to highlight the complexities of healthcare team communication and nurse prof...

This study explores how nurses working in a large, metropolitan hospital make sense of the managed care change. Findings from 24 nurse interviews suggest that nurse sensemaking has generated interpretations of managed care change that are grounded in the caregiving role. Study results show that nurses view managed care with ambiguity. Nurses unders...

In this study, the authors investigate how medical ideology and physician professional identity are socially constructed during morning report, a formal teaching conference considered to be a cornerstone of medical education. Analysis of transcripts from 20 meetings reveals physician identity is developed through ideological discourse that produces...

Recruiting and retaining qualified nursing staff is of growing importance to today's hospital and nurse leaders. Findings from a survey completed by 190 RNs at a major teaching hospital revealed that nursing roles, professional autonomy, and supportive communication were differentially related to the nurses' organizational and professional identifi...

This article explores how the role of the hospital nurse has been transformed by managed care, with a concentration on changes relevant to communicative relationships and processes. Two brief case analyses are considered to examine how hospital nurses have felt the impact of being on the "front lines" of managed care. Findings illustrate the utilit...

Nurse administrators are searching for an expanded repertoire of strategies to attract and retain qualified nursing staff in today's managed care environment. This study examined hospital registered nurses' interpretations of managed care and the effects of those views on nurses' identification with their employing organization and the nursing prof...

Nurse administrators are searching for an expanded repertoire of strategies to attract and retain qualified nursing staff in today’s managed care environment. This study examined hospital registered nurses’ interpretations of managed care and the effects of those views on nurses’ identification with their employing organization and the nursing prof...

Managed care poses numerous opportunities and challenges for today's health care organizations and their employees. This article investigates the ways that hospital nurses develop and make sense of their professional roles and organizational environments in a changing and often uncertain managed care setting. The case study approach used in this re...

Today's turbulent business and social environment often compels organizations to adopt internal programs that will help them cope with complexity. One organizational sector in which this is particularly true is the health care industry, as managed care programs and competitive forces have changed the way hospitals and clinics operate. This study lo...