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Many may receive help from \u201cwarm experts\u201d, i.e. family members or friends, but that is not possible for all. Different groups of frontline government workers may also act as helpers, even if they do not have assistance with digital public services as a core part of their remit. In Norway, health personnel often care for citizens in their home settings and may frequently be asked to help with digital challenges.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Aim<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>This study aims to explore the nature of the work that nurses do in helping citizens with digital challenges, and challenges that they face in doing this.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Methods<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>This explorative study is based on a survey of 3.044 nurses working in the Norwegian municipal sector. The survey constitutes a combination of a qualitative (open ended questions) and quantitative approach (closed questions), The open-ended questions were thematically analyzed and the close questions were used for descriptive statistics.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Results<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>The findings show that nurses do considerable invisible work in helping patients with digital technology. They frequently help with both basic hardware and software challenges, as well as with specific services, some of which are related to health. Many do this driven by their professional ethos, believing this is vital to patients\u00b4 well-being. This takes time from other (core) tasks. They often worry about the help they provide and find themselves in a grey zone exacerbated by a lack of guidelines and support from peers and colleagues.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Conclusion<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>The paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the invisible work nurses do due to digitalization of public services, and why they do this. Furthermore, the paper highlights the grey zone which many nurses must navigate, and the challenges they encounter. Although our findings are from a specific context, they may also apply to nurses and healthcare workers in other countries with high degrees of digitalization, and to some extent to other groups of frontline workers. Implications include better digital training but also more concrete guidelines for nurses on what to do when asked for digital help.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1186\/s12913-026-14040-0","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,20]],"date-time":"2026-01-20T13:52:00Z","timestamp":1768917120000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":3,"title":["Digital inclusion \u2013 invisible work and grey zones for nurses, acting as frontline workers"],"prefix":"10.1186","volume":"26","author":[{"given":"Carl Erik","family":"Moe","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"S\u00f8ren","family":"Skaarup","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,20]]},"reference":[{"key":"14040_CR1","first-page":"1","volume":"3","author":"IB L\u00f8berg","year":"2022","unstructured":"L\u00f8berg IB. 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Int J Qual Stud Health Well-Being. 2014;9(1):26152.","journal-title":"Int J Qual Stud Health Well-Being"}],"container-title":["BMC Health Services Research"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1186\/s12913-026-14040-0","content-type":"text\/html","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"text-mining"},{"URL":"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/content\/pdf\/10.1186\/s12913-026-14040-0.pdf","content-type":"application\/pdf","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"text-mining"},{"URL":"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/content\/pdf\/10.1186\/s12913-026-14040-0.pdf","content-type":"application\/pdf","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,16]],"date-time":"2026-06-16T16:52:22Z","timestamp":1781628742000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/10.1186\/s12913-026-14040-0"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,20]]},"references-count":67,"journal-issue":{"issue":"1","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,12]]}},"alternative-id":["14040"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1186\/s12913-026-14040-0","relation":{"has-preprint":[{"id-type":"doi","id":"10.21203\/rs.3.rs-6578669\/v1","asserted-by":"object"}]},"ISSN":["1472-6963"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1472-6963","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,20]]},"assertion":[{"value":"2 May 2025","order":1,"name":"received","label":"Received","group":{"name":"ArticleHistory","label":"Article History"}},{"value":"7 January 2026","order":2,"name":"accepted","label":"Accepted","group":{"name":"ArticleHistory","label":"Article History"}},{"value":"20 January 2026","order":3,"name":"first_online","label":"First Online","group":{"name":"ArticleHistory","label":"Article History"}},{"order":1,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Declarations"}},{"value":"This survey did not involve personal data requiring formal ethical approval. We did not collect sensitive personal data, or any \u201cindirect identifying information\u201d in our study. We asked the respondents about their age, type of workplace, job title and size of the municipality in which they work. As the size of municipality could belong to one of four predefined categories (less than 1.000 inhabitants, between 1,000 and 5,000, between 5,000 and 50,000 and above 50,000 inhabitants), we have no way of tracing the answers to a specific municipality or respondent. Even in the group of the smallest municipalities, there are several hundred possible respondents. Hence it was deemed unnecessary according to national regulations. Furthermore, our university does not require any approval from a local ethics committee or institutional review board. The GDPR has no general notification or preapproval requirements. However, many Norwegian research institutions, including the University of Agder, have voluntarily chosen to report and seek preapproval of relevant projects with the Sikt \u2013 Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research. We collected informed consent to participate from the respondents as part of the questionnaire. They did not receive any reminders. As the research focused on what digital help the nurses give patients, their reasons for doing (or not doing) this, and their concerns related to this, we did not collect any information on patients or any medical research, hence the WMA Declaration of Helsinki \u2013 Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Participants does not apply. For more information on the legislation, see:\n                      \n                      and for details, see:\n                      \n                      .","order":2,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Ethics approval and consent to participate"}},{"value":"The authors declare no competing interests.","order":3,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Competing interests"}}],"article-number":"240"}}