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| Home | Introduction | Antithesis | Artifact | Utility | Technique | Agency | Network | Power | References | Contact | © June Kaminski, RN MSN PhD Candidate - Contact 2006 - 2023 Site prepared as part of my PhD #2 Comprehensive Exam work University of British Columbia, Department of Education, Faculty of Curriculum & Pedagogy Studies |
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To begin an analysis of nursing informatics related theory, it is logical to examine the concept of antithesis, since this dystopic notion seems to be the primary cause of resistance to information technology within nursing; it highlights the gender issues inherent in this process; and emphasizes the need for nurses to be critically involved in how technology is allowed and assumed within nursing practice (Barnard, 2000). 
In a phenomenological study with surgical nurses, Barnard (2000) found that “technology to a greater or lesser extent can interfere with a nurse's freedom to determine and accomplish individual goals, professional approaches to care and principles of nursing practice. Technology demands levels of attention, time and commitment that can be arduous for a nurse and inappropriate to the needs of patients and the clinical environment” (p. 1138). Barnard summarized this as an interference “with the will (violition) of nurses and the practice of nursing” (p. 1138). Especially in clinical areas where technologically monitored health procedures are copious, such as post-operative, critical care, and intensive care settings, the machines, monitors, and other technical apparatus can demand as much or even more attention from the nurse as the client in question does. “Machinery and equipment are designed specifically to attract attention. Devices with alarms, lights and buzzers purposefully draw nurses to the technology” (p. 1138). In essence, the nurse's ability to provide the kind of humanistic, client-focused care that is aspired for is perceived as being compromised by the demands of technology in the form of diagnostic, therapeutic, and physiological surveillance machines. “Information technology, as well as technology in general, can be seen as a threat. And we have good reasons for seeing it in this way, particularly where we use it for transforming all other possible forms of human interaction under the premises of this perspective. Within this approach, we see the originality of the perspective as the only possible one” (Capurro, 1992, p. 7). 
This perception is strongly associated with resistance in nurses towards informational technology as well as less sophisticated technologies within the clinical milieu. This resistance has multiple layers: technology is seen as a distractor that takes away from time, energy, and interaction that could be spent with the client. Technology is also often seen as an imposed directive that comes from on high – an unnegotiated result of administrative decisions that did not involve the nurses themselves, yet relies on their participation for successful implementation. “According to studies conducted at Clarian Health System during the mid 1990s, nurses provide less than one hour of direct care to their patients in a 12 hour period. The remaining time is spent managing and coordinating communication to other departments, physicians, or members of the healthcare team” (Bartholomew & Curtis, 2004, p. 5). 
Timmons considered Dowling's (1980) model of resistance which consisted of five unique resistance categories, but with some qualification. “Dowling (1980) delineates five types of resistance: a) passive resistance (failure to cooperate) b) oral defamation c) alleged inability to operate the system d) data sabotage and e) refusal to use. The real weakness of Dowling's work is that it makes no attempt to situate these phenomena in a wider context, and he suggests standard managerial responses such as improved training and communication without giving much detail about what forms they might take. As well, resistance is a more complex, multilayered phenomenon than these analyses might suggest” (Timmons, 2003, p. 259). The nurses studied by Timmons primarily demonstrated resistance by either delaying their personal participation in the training sessions and actual utility of the new technologies or engaging in criticism of the systems. “Resistance was as much about the ideas and ways of working that the systems embodied as it was about the actual technology being used. The patterns of resistance can best be summed up by the phrase “resistive compliance” (p. 257). 
Another factor that contributes strongly to resistance is the notion of generational cohort and technological confidence. “We're well aware that the average nurse is 44 years old. This directly impacts technology usage: Older nurses have long-established practice patterns and habits and may often view new technologies as a distraction, something that takes their attention away from the patient. One expert reports that nursing resistance alone has caused the death of numerous IT initiatives. Ironically, while we demand new technology, we actively resist it” (Bartholomew & Curtis, 2004, p. 5).
Nursing has been a female-dominated profession throughout its entire history : even today less than 5 per cent of nurses are male. This fact has understandably influenced the investigation of how visible nursing presence, knowledge, ideas, and theories are within the landscape of health care, including the adoption and implementation of health information systems. Often, the high female ratio in nursing has been used as an excuse to justify the exclusion of nurses from decision-making, planning, and even the adoption process in implementing information systems, yet they are expected to fulfill the goals of the implementation plan by exercising compliance and ability. “Nurses drew from ideological or referent systems that linked female/nurse to nature, nurturance, and caring, and technology to male/power and control over nature, to position nursing as female culture at odds with masculine technology. Depicted as a force for the dehumanization of both patients and nurses, technology signified Other to and even enemy of nursing. This stance reinforces gender distinctions that have traditionally worked against nursing. It also reinforces the prevailing cultural view of women as antitech, technophobic, and unskilled” (Sandelowski, 1999, p. 202). Sandelowski also pointed out that it is usually nurses who educate, enlist, conjole, and elicit compliance from clients to work with health technologies without resistance. She also describes how nurses have been linked with technology since the beginning of hospital-based health care, and are often depended on to exercise the mundane tasks associated with keeping the information system functioning as well as ensuring that all administratively or medically prescribed technological activities are completed and complied with. 
Despite the promise and growing evidence that the use of information technologies in health care promotes efficiency and productivity and reduces redundancy of effort, resistance towards the use of technology in health care is still an important issue. “Many health care professionals regard computing as a world far removed from the concerns that occupy them, a case of the mechanistic versus the humanistic. One factor, however, conjoins the mechanistic and humanistic worlds: information.” (Jones, 1996, p. 591). However, to actually access this information bilaterally, nurses need to have a voice in the design of the systems they use in practice. “Current technology favours a reductionist approach, meaning that nurses could be dictated to by the needs of technology rather than the information needs of their professional practice. Being constricted by reductionist technology may necessitate nurses inputting information that has limited professional value and which fails to capture the richness of patient care and nursing professionalism” (Chambers, 2002, p. 103). 
At this point in time it is understandably difficult to involve all nurses in the development and design of health information systems, mainly because few feel confident in their ability to diagnose, experiment, and even visualize what an appropriate system would look and act like. “The lessons of restoration suggest that to counter the technological practices that presently plague many acute care environments, nurses need to develop an ecological literacy that first reinterprets and then reconstructs our relations with a technological world” (Marck, 2000, p. 63). In the future, this simple enough task will likely be easier to negotiate, since nurses who grew up while the Internet, hand-held devices and other technologies were taking hold may feel more attuned to the way technology works. A middle ground can be attained by teaming nurses with designers to brainstorm the best strategies for development, rather than expecting nurses to serve as both user and designer. This can be summed up simply by considering Kirkley and Stein's (2004) advice to “....provide the right functionality and hardware at the right place at the right time. Create functionality that realistically supports and enhances a nurse's work flow, opens channels of communication, and unlocks doors to useful information as a top priority. A well-designed intuitive interface that 'thinks like a nurse thinks' is key” (p. 220). 
It is a given that information technology will continue to be integrated and applied to nursing practice and health care in general. It does so in both visible and invisible ways and permeates nursing more and more with each passing year. It is important that nurses gain knowledge of all of the benefits and implications of this techno-saturation, and voice their concerns and visions accordingly. As Barnard and Sandelowski summarized, “We argue for the need for reconciliation of presumed tension(s) between technology and person focused care and the need to reconsider our ways of understanding the relations between technology and nursing” (2001, p. 367). We also need to be fundamentally aware of how information and other technologies shape our way of being in the health care landscape, and how our very profession is being shaped by current electronic developments. “The duality of technology, as matter and meaning, lies not in its necessary opposition to humanization but rather in its recursiveness; in its existence as both objective, material force, and as a socially constructed and chameleon-like entity” (Barnard & Sandelowski, 2001, p. 372). This includes how technology has become a foundational part of organizational and medical culture and by default, viewed as an integral artifact of nursing.