Purpose – This paper focuses on knowledge sharing in health care. The aim of the paper is to furtherunderstand how digital applications can facilitate knowledge sharing between different care providers andhealth-care professionals.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on a qualitative action case study, performed as aformative intervention study as a Change Laboratory, where a digital application concerning wound supportwas used. The Change Laboratory was used for knowledge sharing in the assessment and treatment process ofwounds. The collected data was then thematically analyzed.

Findings – The findings show how digital applications can facilitate knowledge sharing, but also the need forcomplementary collaborative sessions. The main contribution is the rich description of how digitalapplications together with these sessions can facilitate knowledge sharing.

Originality/value – This paper shows that activities as collaborative sessions performed on theorganizational level prove to support knowledge sharing and learning when a new digital application has beenimplemented in the work process. It also shows that these sessions contributed to identifying new knowledgethat has potential for being included in the application and hence are important to keeping the applicationupdated and relevant over time

Real estate development holds a pre-eminent place in the world of urban and regional planning. There is a growing demand across local planning agencies, private consultancies, and community-based organizations for urban planning professionals who possess a solid understanding of real estate development, finance, and related analytical tools. This shift reflects the increasingly complex nature of urban development, where planners are expected not only to guide long-term land-use visions but also to engage with market dynamics, assess financial feasibility, and work collaboratively with private developers and investors. Learning that is facilitated by socio-culturally rich and authentic experiences, and guided by experts, is one goal of educational practice.

WIL (Work-Integrated Learning) pedagogy affords experiences that potentially develop employability skills, strengthen student agency, build personal attributes, and nurture career development for the students. However, external stakeholders’ involvement is a key feature of the WIL approach. The process of WIL not only includes the educational approach for preparation and implementation, but also reflection, debriefing, and evaluation of the students’ learning experiences. Thus, the aim of this paper is to illustrate how WIL can enrich students’ understanding of real estate development while fostering professional readiness.

In order to fulfil the aim, an action research study on the design and implementation of a university-level course in real estate development with a clear focus on WIL, was used. The course was developed to bridge academic knowledge with practical experience, emphasize the dynamic and complex processes involved in real estate development. By incorporating guest lectures, site visits, a specific entrepreneurial learning perspective about pitching together with external teaching partner organisation and project-based learning, the course offers students multiple entry points into real-world contexts and decision-making environments. The course aims to equip students with skills in pro forma modelling, project evaluation, public-private partnerships, and the negotiation processes inherent in development projects.

The results show that the course enabled the students to reflect as professionals, as real estate development planners are increasingly acting as intermediaries between public interests and private capital. The students learn real estate development in terms of financial feasibility, but also in relation to how projects serve the public interest over time. When the students act as planners they are in a unique position; they need to collaborate with developers to support projects that are both financially and politically realistic. The students also make sure that these projects benefit the community. This means that the students learn to protect public interests as they evolve, without creating unnecessary barriers for developers and ensuring that public resources are used wisely.

This paper situates theoretical knowledge within practical frameworks. Such an approach not only enhances student engagement but also contributes to knowledge co-creation between academic institutions and the property sector, making it a valuable model for applied education in the real estate environment.

Background:

The shortage of midwives makes it difficult to meet healthcare needs in early labour, a phase when professional support and personal evaluation are crucial. Digitalisation has transformed healthcare, offering new communication and support methods. Although still uncommon, the use of a virtual waiting room with video calls by midwives during early labour could provide vital support for pregnant women and their partners. This study aimed to describe labour ward midwives’ experiences of remote video calls with women during early labour.

Methods:

A qualitative descriptive study with seven semi-structured interviews followed by a qualitative content analysis was conducted.

Results:

The findings revealed that remote video calls enabled the midwives to work flexibly with chosen working hours and become involved in a challenging new e-function. They interacted with the women and their partners and experienced that they created a supportive relationship and simultaneously gained an overview of the situation. They felt secure in their professional role when providing the necessary care and had confidence in their competence.

Conclusion:

The potential benefits of integrating remote video calls into midwives’ tasks during early labour care include flexible working hours and fostering supportive relationships with women and their partners at home.

To ensure that health and social care systems function effectively for all, particularly in light of increasing life expectancy and the projected global rise in the older population over the coming decades, the digitalization of healthcare is regarded as a key strategy for enhancing accessibility and efficiency. However, older adults may face emotional challenges and have limited experience with digital tools, which can hinder adoption and reduce the effectiveness of such technologies. To design appropriate digital solutions and tailor support, it is essential to address the challenges that older adults encounter when using digital technologies in health and social care. Therefore, the aim of this study is to illuminate the challenges older adults face in using digital technology within these contexts.

A scoping review was used to identify research to illuminate older adults’ challenges with digital technologies in health and social care. This literature review included empirical peer-reviewed studies published between the year 2015 and 2025. The literature search was conducted in PubMed, Cinahl and Scopus databases.

The findings indicate that older adults may experience isolation and loneliness in relation to the use of digital technologies, which can negatively impact their quality of life. Among older adults, limited digital literacy, increased dependence on others, and a certain resistance to change have been observed. Nevertheless, many older adults expressed an interest in learning how digital health technologies could support them in ageing and during illness. This study is expected to provide a nuanced understanding of the challenges older adults face when using digital technologies in health and social care, which may assist healthcare professionals in supporting older adults with declining health and limited digital literacy.

Purpose – This study aims to explore the impact of power games and leadership dynamics on organizational learning and resilience within healthcare organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic. By examining power struggles and sensegiving practices across hierarchical levels in two Swedish hospitals, the study investigates how these dynamics affected decision-making, crisis management and adaptive responses in a high-pressure environment.

Design/methodology/approach – This qualitative study uses semi-structured interviews with key healthcare managers and personnel responsible for crisis management. A deductive analysis is applied using theoretical frameworks on organizational learning, power games and sensegiving. Three critical events are analyzed to illustrate the effects of power dynamics and leadership practices on learning and organizational adaptation.

Findings – The study finds that power games and unilateral sensegiving significantly disrupted communication, decision-making and organizational learning. Informal leadership structures emerged to address immediate challenges, yet tensions with formal management highlighted the need to integrate these emergent practices into formal structures.

Practical implications – This study highlights that effective pandemic crisis management in healthcare requires balancing formal authority with inclusive and adaptive practices. Key implications include grounding sensegiving in frontline input, adopting flexible “plan-to-plan” approaches, involving hospital-level managers in decision-making, prioritizing practical over political solutions and fostering service-oriented leadership that enables rather than controls.

Originality/value – This study contributes to understanding how leadership and power dynamics shape learning and resilience during healthcare crises. By combining the insights with organizational learning and the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle, it provides a novel perspective on integrating formal and informal leadership to enhance crisis management.

Background

Patients with schizophrenia have a significantly shorter life expectancy, emphasizing the need for better interventions for physical illness. Limited knowledge, unclear responsibilities, and insufficient collaboration between psychiatric and primary care services increase the risk of inadequate, uncoordinated, and delayed treatment for this vulnerable group. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore healthcare professionals' experiences regarding support, treatment, and interprofessional collaboration for patients with schizophrenia and physical illness.

Method

A qualitative study with semi-structured interviews of nine psychiatric and primary care professionals. Data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis.

Results

The analysis generated in an overall theme, Insufficient care coordination for patients with schizophrenia and physical illness of three categories, each with two subcategories. The first category, Inadequate internal clinical protocol, included the subcategories: difficulties in identifying physical illness and differing use of guidelines among healthcare institutions involved. The second category, Deficient division of responsibility included the subcategories: unclear defined division of responsibility for coordinating support and treatment and consequences of shared responsibility for pharmacotherapy. The third category, Lack of common clinical protocols included the subcategories: difficult to get in contact with one another and concrete suggestions concerning common clinical protocols.

Conclusion

To counteract fragmented care for patient group, a more integrated care model is needed. The study highlights the importance of clearer allocation of responsibility, improved communication, standardized routines, and the implementation of coordinated individual care plans (CIP), as well as more user-friendly screening tools to enhance care quality and reduce the risk of treatment errors.

Background:

This paper explores vaccine hesitancy through the lens of management learning in public healthcare during pandemics. It addresses the need for qualitative insights from active academics, focusing on their uncertainties and ambivalence regarding COVID‐19 vaccination. The study aims to deepen understanding of vaccine hesitancy during the pandemic from a management learning perspective, examining healthcare systems, governance, and community trust.

Methods:

Using a qualitative approach, the research draws from a multidisciplinary research network in health and digital society. A total of 27 scholars from 17 countries participated in an open‐ended questionnaire designed to elicit insights on the strategies, ethics, and public responses associated with national COVID‐19 vaccination efforts. Data collection occurred from May 2021 to July 2021, during the initial rollout of vaccines to broader populations. The analysis employed a hermeneutical framework, using thematic analysis to interpret textual data. Illustrative accounts enriched the contextual understanding.

Results:

The resulting themes are information and disinformation; social inclusion and exclusion; trust and distrust; individual liberties and collective constraints. The findings indicate that individual nations actions play a role in shaping public discourse,opinion, and political responses related to vaccination, despite a globalized context. The analysis reveals that historical and political factors significantly influence public health policies and perceptions of vaccine hesitancy, together with the importance of information and dialogue with various stakeholders to create trust.

Conclusions:

The COVID‐19 crisis, characterized by threats and uncertainties, has strained trust in public health institutions.A management learning perspective can be adopted that embraces a comprehensive understanding of the complexities sur-rounding COVID‐19 vaccination. By fostering collaborative learning and stakeholder engagement, public health organizationscan enhance their responsiveness and build trust within communities.

Purpose

Learning in the workplace is essential for adapting to rapid changes in contemporary health care. Yet little is known about how informal learning occurs in rural primary care, particularly in the context of e-health adoption. The purpose of this study is to address the gap and explore how workplace affordances shape informal learning among health-care professionals in rural primary care.

Design/methodology/approach

Data was collected through semistructured interviews with health-care professionals (n = 19), doctors, nurses, psychologists, managers, assistant nurses and medical secretaries, at a rural primary health-care center in Sweden. Thematic analysis was used in the analysis.

Findings

The findings highlight the duality of rurality: while patients with complex care needs and close-knit professional relationships provide opportunities for spontaneous on-the-spot learning, heavy workloads, limited resources and resistance to digital tools act as significant barriers. The result illustrates how a workplace might afford both restrictive and expansive learning environments, depending on the subject matter at hand. By applying a two-level approach to affordances, the analysis distinguishes between general learning conditions shaped by rural primary care settings and domain-specific affordances tied to the adoption of digital tools.

Practical implications

While general workplace affordances – such as supportive culture and open communication – are necessary, they are not sufficient for sustainable e-health adoption. Without targeted, domain-specific affordances that align with the content of digital work, informal learning remains limited. To succeed, organizations must embed digital tools into daily routines in ways that resonate with professional values, foster motivation and build a culture where digital work feels meaningful and co-owned.

Originality/value

This study offers a novel contribution by integrating workplace affordance theory with the expansive/restrictive learning framework to examine informal learning during digital transformation in rural primary care. It introduces a two-level typology – distinguishing between general and domain-specific affordances – and reveals how rural settings can simultaneously enable and constrain learning, depending on the content of work. This layered perspective advances understanding of how digital tools are unevenly integrated into everyday practice in rural health care.

In technological transformations Industry 5.0 should bring us towards a sustainable, human-centric and resilient European industry. Critical assets have dematerialized, and the most valuable asset is knowledge (Marchegiani, 2021). Hence, employees and their well-being are more critical than ever. A good working environment must pay attention to and meet employee´s psychological needs.

Three areas of psychological needs are described by Deci and Ryan (2011) in the Self-Determination Theory (SDT):1) autonomy, responsibility and ownership of their own process and vision.2) competence and development possibilities, to build capability at different levels.3) relatedness, to be in a context and the possibility and authority to jointly influence and develop.

This paper aims to share experiences on how the use of these needs have increased our knowledge concerning employee´s psychological needs in a Swedish industrial company, in the view of a health-promoting working life. Interviews have been conducted with 32 respondents and deductively analyzed by using the needs in SDT as an analytical tool. The analysis reveals a number of needs, and hence opportunities, mainly in Competence and Relatedness:Competence perceived to work well in general, but there was an indication that it may have become a little worse the last time. Furthermore, the analysis reveals a need for strategic competence development when new things were decided to be included in the company. As put in the interviews: "We take things to heart and say we're going to have it, but it's not implemented. You do not get the possibility to learn it. It's expected that you just have to work and understand.”:Relatedness

The analysis shows that the company´s main needs and hence the main opportunities were in “Relatedness”, Here three subareas were identified:- Context, “spirit”: The employees thrive with each other, but there was also a feeling that people are not as engaged anymore. E.g. “I have made this wall and is proud of it, now you don't care in the same way”. Furthermore, there seems to be different pictures between management and the other employees. “I want it to be good and do well, but I perceived as negative when I say something, even though it's about caring for the company”.- Development work and changes: People feel unable to influence. "The management says that they are listening and taking to heart, but nothing is happening." The employees want to be more involved and have more information. There is a great need to understand why things are going to change and getting feedback how it proceeds.- Internal communication: There is a need for more visibility of the management in production. The company has developed their digital communication, but there still is a need of analog communication in some situations.

Using the three areas of psychological needs in SDT as an analytical tool increases our understanding of which company-specific areas that are important to focus on for a health-promoting working life. Furthermore, it gave us knowledge and understanding concerning suitable activities for meeting the needs. For example: develop a clear structure and rules for how to perform the development work. Explaining why and giving continuous and structured feedback are important aspects. Another important aspect is that decisions concerning work changes must include decisions concerning the need for training.