The nursing staff and the myth of group work

Abstract

This paper has two objectives: the first one is analyzing the individual behaviors indicated by non-verbal communication during shist exchanges; the second one is analyzing group behavior during shist exchanges based on the observation the videotaped scenes of a nursing staff during a shist exchange. A list of non-verbal communication signs was used to analyze individual behaviors. The concepts group were used to analyze group behaviors. The results showed that ineffective non verbal signs prevailed over effective ones and inadequate non- verbal signs were more visible than the adequate ones. One may conclude that shist exchange was not a group activity.