Articulating text-based work processes in an institutional ethnography of mouth care in the ICU

Original title: Word of mouth: Articulating text-based work processes in an institutional ethnography of mouth care in the intensive care unit (ICU
Speaker: Craig Dale, RN, PhD, CNCC(C), Postdoctoral Fellow, Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto
Date: September 25, 2014
Abstract: The challenge in institutional ethnography (IE) is to analyze the data in a way that brings the institution into view. I confronted this undertaking in my doctoral research, where I was concerned with two types of ICU nursing work: oral care and documentation. In this presentation I discuss how following a sequence of text-based work processes played a vital role in mapping the social relations of mouth care in the high-tech ICU context. As a source of contagion in critical illness, the mouth is now a sensitive margin between individual and institutional bodies concerned with the potential of local ICU infections having trans-local effects. My analysis argues that textual practices, as authorized methods of knowing and intervening in this matter, have paradoxical implications for patients, clinicians and the institution of health