Telenursing is a rapidly expanding actor in the Swedish
healthcare system, as in other Western nations. Although
rare, tragic events occur within this context, and are
reminders of the importance of giving patient safety the
highest priority. As telenurses’ main sources of information
are their dialogues with the callers, the provision of
safe care can depend on the quality of this dialogue. The
aim of this study was to identify issues that could threaten
patient safety in telenurses’ dialogues with callers. As
part of an educational intervention, a researcher visited a
sample of six telenurses five to six times at their workplace
to listen to and discuss, together with the telenurses,
their dialogues with callers in stimulated recall
sessions. Each call and the following discussion between
researcher and telenurse was tape-recorded and transcribed
as text, resulting in a total of 121 calls. Qualitative
content analysis of the reflections and following
discussions revealed that threats to patient safety could
be related to the surrounding society, to the organisation
of telenursing, to the telenurse and to the caller. This
study gives insight into significant problem areas that can
affect patient safety in telenursing in Sweden. Issues that
need to be focused on in telenursing educational programmes
and future research are suggested, as well as
the need for organisational developmen