M.Sc Student | Shaulov Alina |
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Subject | The Doble-Edged Sword of Informing Patients about the Progress of their Treatments: It's Effect on Empowerment and Emotions of Medical Staff |
Department | Department of Industrial Engineering and Management | Supervisor | Professor Anat Rafaeli |
Full Thesis text | ![]() |
Information is considered as an important source of power, especially in the context of organizations. Information can be redistributed within organizations, such that some members may receive new information that was previously not available for them. In the current paper, we examine the complexity of information redistribution in organizations, while focusing on the context of Emergency Departments (ED's). In collaboration with a medical center in north Israel, we developed and implemented a new information system that provides ED patients with ongoing information about their treatment journey in the ED. Yet as we discuss in the current paper, this dissemination of information to patients might affect the ED medical staff. Qualitative interviews with the staff and results of five online studies support the idea that informing patients using an information system, affects staff perception of information gap, which in turn is associated with staff reduced sense of empowerment and increased negative emotions. Our research adds to existing theories that discuss how control over resources such as information establishes the power relations between organizational members, and highlights how such relations might change as a result of information redistribution. Moreover, our research proposes the importance of considering different organizational members (such as customers and employees) in the attempt to provide information to specific members.