Technostress in the Cooperative Use of Technology at a Danish Hospital

Digital technologies such as radiology information systems, scanners, and electronic health records are central to clinical cooperation in hospitals. While these systems enable efficiency, they also give rise to technostress—stressful or frustrating experiences with technology. Prior research has primarily examined technostress at the individual level. In this study, we investigate how technostress both shapes and is shaped by cooperative practices. Drawing on qualitative interviews and a pilot survey conducted in a nuclear medicine department at a Danish university hospital, we identify interruptions, performance monitoring, and uncertainty as strongest dimensions of technostress with cooperative consequences. Our findings show how technical breakdowns, system updates, and misaligned workflows disrupt temporal coordination, force ad hoc renegotiations of responsibilities, and weaken trust in shared digital infrastructure. This frames technostress as connected to a breakdown in cooperative and temporal alignment, and not just a personal and momentarily discomfort.