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Nurses resisting information technology
Author(s) -
Timmons Stephen
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
nursing inquiry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.66
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1440-1800
pISSN - 1320-7881
DOI - 10.1046/j.1440-1800.2003.00177.x
Subject(s) - resistance (ecology) , variety (cybernetics) , embodied cognition , criticism , perspective (graphical) , compliance (psychology) , phrase , information system , information technology , sociology , nursing , computer science , public relations , knowledge management , engineering ethics , medicine , psychology , social psychology , political science , engineering , law , artificial intelligence , biology , operating system , ecology
TIMMONS S. Nursing Inquiry 2003; 10 : 257–269 Nurses resisting information technology Resistance in the workplace, by nurses, has not been extensively studied from a sociological perspective. In this paper, nurses’ resistance to the implementation and use of computer systems is described and analysed, on the basis of semistructured interviews with 31 nurses in three UK NHS hospitals. While the resistance was not ‘successful’, in that it did not prevent the implementation of the systems, it nonetheless persisted. Resistance took a wide variety of forms, including attempts to minimise or ‘put off’ use of the systems, and extensive criticism of the systems, though outright refusal to use them was very rare. 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’.