From the first thermometers, stethoscopes and physiological monitors, technologies have semiotically symbolized the nursing profession in both a social and cultural way. It also reinforces that evolving technology has consistently been interwoven with the nursing profession in an intricate dance of ritual, ceremony, and cultural symbol. It reinforces the idea that nursing is nothing more than manual labor and the mindless application of medical science on orders from physicians” (Sandelowski, 1999, p. “Although nurses continue to liken themselves and their work to technology to make their work visible and to advance their social positions, the metaphoric link between nurses/nursing and technology is troubling for nurses for several reasons. Thus, technology has remained a key artifact of nursing culture. Yet, nurses of the time also recognize that technology could also support and even boost the scientific foundations of the nursing field as it struggled to begin the long process of becoming recognized as a legitimate discipline in its own right. 3).Īs early as the 1930's nurses began to question this premise, and recognized that technology could potentially threaten the very essence of nursing, an essence that remained elusive and unnamed. “Physicians thought of nurses much like stethoscopes and surgical instruments, as physical or bodily extensions of physicians” (Sandelowski, 2000, p. The nurses as almost invisible workers often shaped the technologies to work more effectively, or less obtrusively yet rarely were credited for doing so. The fact that nurses were both capable and eager to apply technologies in the care of patients served the mandate of medicine well, since physicians were perceived as responsible for any healing or recovery. In the early 20th century, hospital nursing was shaped as medical technology through the provision of manual labour and compliantly following doctors' orders, while physicians controlled the arena of care through their mental labour expenditures, crystallized into diagnoses and treatments. In fact, as Sandelowski points out, “.for most of the history of nursing, nurses (as women) and technology (in the form of material devices, such as x-ray machines, techniques, such as surgery and organizational systems, such as hospitals and specialized units of care) have been represented as embodied extensions of physicians and as servants both to physicians and to the general public in the fight against disease” (1999, p. This premise served the evolution of the medical profession well. ![]() “The link was thus created early in this century between sympathetic care embodied in the female nurse and scientific care, embodied in medical and hospital technology.” (Sandelowski, 1999, p. Indeed, it was the combination of technology and nurses that lured people to go to hospitals when they became sick, placing them in the center of medical care. They did this by “.educating patients about new devices, getting patients to accept and comply with their use, and alleviating patients' fears about them” (p.2). In fact, Sandelowski purports that it was nurses who made the use of technology in health care acceptable to the public. ![]() Nurses made hospitals hospitable to both patients and the new machinery of care housed there” (2000, p. “The hospital became the carefully established space where rituals and ceremonies were performed that centered upon the conspicuous display of new tools and equipment. It was the lure of modern equipment and eventually machinery, the presence of attentive and efficient nurses, and the aseptic, medical domain embodied in hospitals that shifted health care away from the home to the institution. ![]() Perhaps unwittingly, nurses served as a critical force that supported the scientific and technological development of the health care system that exists today. Margarete Sandelowski (2000) presented a comprehensive examination of how nursing and technology have been consistently linked since the advent of the bureaucratic health care system beginning in the early 19th century. In the context of this analysis, artifact refers to the notion that technology of all kinds, including the contemporary inclusion of information technologies in nursing is an inherent, almost seamless cultural phenomenon, one that is long-standing and can be taken for granted as part of nursing evolution. Artifact: The Revealing of Nursing Informatics: Exploring the Field.Ĭultural artifacts or artefacts within nursing are human-made objects that reflect both professional and workplace characteristics such as values, norms, myths, sagas, symbols, rituals, ceremonies: this includes the use and placement of objects within nursing practice.
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