{"doi":"10.29086/10413/22840","title":"Developing an intervention to manage professional isolation among emergency nurses working in Lesotho: an action research approach.","abstract":"Introduction: Professional isolation is described as a deficiency in one’s network of social relations at work and is associated with compromised health service delivery and quality of life among health professionals, particularly those working in low-resource environments. Aim: to develop an intervention for managing professional isolation among emergency nurses working in Lesotho. Method: A mutually collaborative action research study, with an exploratory-descriptive qualitative design, was conducted in the emergency departments of five selected hospitals in Lesotho, with 25 purposively sampled registered nurses. A needs assessment was conducted through a scoping review and focus group discussions, followed by the establishment of a three-member research team (Cycle One). Thereafter, 13 individual interviews were conducted to explore the perceptions of professional isolation among emergency nurses (Cycle Two). The intervention, a Digital Community of Practice, was developed (Cycle Three) and facilitated through WhatsApp platform, then was implemented and evaluated in Cycle Four. Results: The scoping review highlighted there is limited literature on professional isolation among health professionals and the focus group discussions revealed that participants acknowledged that there was a need for such a study. Qualitative interviews exploring professional isolation resulted in an overarching theme of ‘feeling like an island’ and three categories; lack of interprofessional collaboration and consultation, skills mismatch, and enforced loneliness. Following consultation with the research team, a digital community of practice was developed for emergency nurses using the WhatsApp platform and then implemented. Conclusion This study revealed that emergency nurses in Lesotho do experience professional isolation and a digital community of practice developed using social media, such as WhatsApp, as a communication tool, could be considered as an intervention strategy for managing professional isolation among emergency nurses working in low-resource environments. However, it is recommended that a larger-scale study be undertaken to encourage the motivation for developing contextual interventions for addressing professional isolation in emergency care settings.","journal":"ResearchSpace (University of KwaZulu-Natal)","year":2023,"id":415599,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9599,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1098834,"name":"Mahlomola Kutoane","orcid":"0000-0001-7724-3543","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":210,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:22:12.933438Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}