Technology and Identity in healthcare: Clinicians experiences of the implementation of a new technology in intensive care units.
- Publication Type:
- Conference Proceeding
- Citation:
- 2023
- Issue Date:
- 2023-01-01
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This paper reports on an ethnographic field study of three public hospitals in Australia implementing a new technology for intensive care units (ICU). ICU is a dynamic work environment where time is a precious commodity for all healthcare workers involved in patient care. This is because patients in the ICU require prompt assessments and regimented treatment administration. Typically clinicians provide such care while also completing a myriad of other tasks in each shift (Mador and Shaw, 2009). Busy and often overcrowded units, combined with a shortage of highly trained clinicians and allied healthcare workers, contribute to the struggle to meet the demands of high volumes of complex patients, emerging new technologies, and staffing shortages that challenge the provision of high-quality care (Kirk et al., 2019). In these environments, policy and management focus has shifted to improvement strategies and reorganization of care, to optimize efficiency and quality of care. However, although management researchers have paid a lot of attention to workers as “human capital”, or in other words, the object of managers’ efforts they have paid far less attention to workers as subjects. In this article, therefore, my focus is on healthcare workers and how they navigate their identities and practices in a rapidly changing world of work. In doing so, this paper responds to recent calls to address how emerging technologies impact our understanding of organizing (Bailey et al., 2019; Murray et al., 2021; Von Krogh, 2018) by exploring the experiences of workers during implementation of a new technology.
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