Table 1.

Sample excerpts from field notes and resultant content themes

Excerpt	Content theme
Nurse initiates communication at physician workstation Nurse: “Plan for patient?” Physician: “Wait two hours and verify with poison control”	Plan and disposition
Nurse initiates communication with physician while at nurse workstation Nurse: “What did they call about?” Regarding phone call physician just completed. Physician: “Labs back now. Albumen back?” Asking while nurse viewing labs in electronic medical record. Nurse: “Probably just haven’t posted.”	Task status
Physician: “Add ionized calcium.” Nurse: “I’ll generate order, trying to add on, I’ll put it [the order] in.”	Orders/medications/tests
Nurse initiates communication at physician workstation Nurse: “Can walk…”	Patient health status
“…got Tylenol, wound clean.”	Task status
Physician: “Can you go back in with translator phone?”	Other

Contextual information captured in the notes is shown in italics