Sociomaterial Practices In Medical Work

This book presents a sociomaterial perspective on work and organizational practices within the operating room. Looking at medical work from a sociological perspective and drawing on ethnographic observations conducted in a hospital's operating block, this book analyses the entanglements of humans and technologies in the execution of everyday activities. It highlights how the sociomateriality of work and organizational practices manifests in the encounters between operators and material artifacts and in the way objects and technologies participate in processes and practices of organizational communication. Objects and technologies are also shaped by these very practices, giving rise to a recursive relationship wherein technology, communication, and organizing are intertwined. A sociomaterial understanding of organizational and working practices explains the role of objects and technologies in the generation and enactment of professional knowledge, while questioning how power materializes through the interaction of humans and technical objects. This book will be of great interest to scholars, students, and practitioners interested in how sociomaterial perspectives can inform organization studies and reshape our understanding of the intricate relationships between humans and technologies in healthcare settings.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book examines the concept of care and care practices in healthcare from the interdisciplinary perspectives of continental philosophy, care ethics, the social sciences, and anthropology. Areas addressed include dementia care, midwifery, diabetes care, psychiatry, and reproductive medicine. Special attention is paid to ambivalences and tensions within both the concept of care and care practices. Contributions in the first section of the book explore phenomenological and hermeneutic approaches to care and reveal historical precursors to care ethics. Empirical case studies and reflections on care in institutionalised and standardised settings form the second section of the book. The concluding chapter, jointly written by many of the contributors, points at recurring challenges of understanding and practicing care that open up the field for further research and discussion. This collection will be of great value to scholars and practitioners of medicine, ethics, philosophy, social science and history.

Investigates theoretically and empirically what it means to design technological artefacts while embracing the large number of practices which practitioners engage with when handling technologies. The authors discusses the fields of design and sociomateriality through their shared interests towards the basic nature of work, collaboration, organization, technology, and human agency, striving to make the debates and concepts originating in each field accessible to each other, and thus moving sociomateriality closer to the practical concerns of design and providing a useful analytical toolbox to information system designers and field researchers alike. Sociomaterial-Design: Bounding Technologies in Practice takes on the challenge of redefining design practices through insights from the emerging debate on sociomateriality. It does so by bringing forward a comparative examination of two longitudinal ethnographic studies of the practices within two emergency departments – one in Canada and one in the United States of America. A particular focus is placed upon the use of current collaborative artefacts within the emergency departments and the transformation into digital artefacts through design.

In Reproductive Medicine and the Life Sciences in the Contemporary Economy, Alexander Styhre and Rebecka Arman illuminate issues that have given rise to terms such as 'the bioeconomy' and 'the baby business'. The life sciences play an increasing role in providing services and commodities consumed by businesses and the public. Based on an in-depth study of clinics offering assisted fertilization in Sweden, this book is the first to examine the commercialization and commodification of know-how derived from the life sciences, from the point of view of organization theory. In the field of reproductive medicine there has been significant growth of both public and private clinical work. Clinics are places where individual interests and concerns and social and institutional arrangements intersect. With a front office where patients encounter various professional groups and a back office comprising the laboratories wherein human reproductive materials are handled and stored, they are more than just places in which medicine is applied in a clinical setting. Clinicians in this field actively influence policy-making and the regulatory frameworks that monitor and set the boundaries for their work. These are places where social and cultural interests and concerns are translated into policies and practice. The clinics are open social systems, responding to and influencing discussions. This book combines organization theory, sociological theory, gender theory, science and technology studies, and philosophy. It emphasises the critical importance of a sociomaterial perspective on organization, stressing how material and social resources are always of necessity folded into each other in day-to-day organizing.

RESEARCHING MEDICAL EDUCATION Researching Medical Education is an authoritative guide to excellence in educational research within the healthcare professions presented by the Association for the Study of Medical Education and AMEE. This text provides readers with key foundational knowledge, while introducing a range of theories and how to use them, illustrating a diversity of methods and their use, and giving guidance on practical researcher development. By linking theory, design, and methods across the spectrum of health professions education research, the text supports the improvement of quality, capacity building, and knowledge generation. Researching Medical Education includes contributions from experts and emerging researchers from five continents. The text includes information on: Developing yourself and your practice as a health professions education researcher Methods and methodologies including ethnography/digital ethnography, visual methods, critical discourse analysis, functional and corpus linguistics, critical pedagogy, critical race theory and participatory action research, and educational neuroscience methods Theories including those where relationships between context, environment, people and things matter (e.g., complexity theory, activity theory, sociomateriality, social cognitive theories and participatory practice) and those which are more individually focused (e.g., health behaviour theories, emotions in learning, instructional design, cognitive load theory and deliberate practice) Includes 10 brand new chapters Researching Medical Education is the ideal resource for anyone researching health professions education, from medical school to postgraduate training to continuing professional development. “This is an extraordinary text that combines theory and practice in medical education research. The authors represent the who’s who of medical education research, and their wisdom and insights will help guide novice and experienced researchers alike.” —David M. Irby, Professor Emeritus of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, USA “Research in health professions education is maturing. This is clearly evidenced by the second edition of Researching Medical Education. In 30 chapters this book takes you on an exciting voyage on research theories and research methodologies. This book is a comprehensive resource for anyone engaging in research in health professions education.” — Cees van der Vleuten, former Director of the School of Health Professions Education, Maastricht University, The Netherlands

This book presents leading-edge perspectives and methodologies to address emerging issues of concern for professional learning in contemporary society. The conditions for professional practice and learning are changing dramatically in the wake of globalization, new modes of knowledge production, new regulatory regimes, and increased economic-political pressures. In the wake of this, a number of challenges for learning emerge: more practitioners become involved in interprofessional collaboration developments in new technologies and virtual workworlds emergence of transnational knowledge cultures and interrelated circuits of knowledge. The space and time relations in which professional practice and learning are embedded are becoming more complex, as are the epistemic underpinnings of professional work. Together these shifts bring about intersections of professional knowledge and responsibilities that call for new conceptions of professional knowing. Exploring what the authors call sociomaterial perspectives on professional learning they argue that theories that trace not just the social but also the material aspects of practice – such as tools, technologies, texts but also bodies and actions - are useful for coming to terms with the challenges described above. Reconceptualising Professional Learning develops these issues through specific contemporary cases focused on one of the book’s three main themes: (1) professionals’ knowing in practice, (2) professionals’ work arrangements and technologies, or (3) professional responsibility. Each chapter draws upon innovative theory to highlight the sociomaterial webs through which professional learning may be reconceptualised. Authors are based in Australia, Canada, Italy, Norway, Sweden, and the USA as well as the UK and their cases are based in a range of professional settings including medicine, teaching, nursing, engineering, social services, the creative industries, and more. By presenting detailed accounts of these themes from a sociomaterial perspective, the book opens new questions and methodological approaches. These can help make more visible what is often invisible in today’s messy dynamics of professional learning, and point to new ways of configuring educational support and policy for professionals.

Practice-based approaches to knowing, learning, innovating, and managing have thrived in recent years. Calling upon numerous narratives from a range of research fields, the author offers insight into the many possibilities of practice research, highlighting the inextricable links between humans and technology as the key emergent trend in management studies. Developing an innovative posthumanist approach, this novel book offers a useful and insightful compass for the navigation of practice-based studies through the lens of exemplar vignettes from internationally acclaimed researchers.

Featuring the perspectives of more than 40 leading international researchers, theorists and practitioners in clinical education, Learning and Teaching in Clinical Contexts: A Practical Guide provides a bridge between the theoretical aspects of clinical education and the delivery of practical teaching strategies. Written by Clare Delany and Elizabeth Molloy, each chapter weaves together education theory, education strategies and illustrative learning and teaching case scenarios drawn from multidisciplinary clinical contexts. The text supports clinicians and educators responsible for designing and delivering health professional education in clinical workplaces and clinicians undertaking continuing education in workplace teaching. The book is divided into four sections, each addressing a key aspect of the learner and educator experience. Section 1 considers the learner’s needs as they make key transitions from classroom to workplace, or recent graduate to competent clinician Section 2 focuses on the influence of workplace contexts and how they can be used as positive catalysts to enhance learning Section 3 highlights the role of workplace assessments as embedded processes to positively influence learning Section 4 provides an overview of the changing roles of the clinical educator and processes and models of professional development to build educational expertise Demonstrates the integrated nature of three key threads within the field of clinical education: theory, method and context Highlights theoretical frameworks: cognitive, psychological, sociocultural, experiential and ethical traditions and how they inform teaching decisions Incorporates case studies throughout to provide a context to learning and teaching in clinical education Includes practical tips from expert practitioners across different topics Includes an eBook with print purchase on evolve