TY - JOUR
T1 - Becoming a diagnostic agent
T2 - A collated ethnography of digital-sensory work in caregiving intra-actions
AU - Maslen, Sarah
AU - Harris, Anna
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank the participants in both of our studies for generously giving their time and for sharing their experiences and skills. Funding for Study 1 was provided to Sarah Maslen by the University of Canberra . Study 2 was funded by a Dutch Research Council NWO Vici Grant entitled Sonic Skills: Sound and Listening in the Development of Science, Technology, Medicine (1920–now) awarded to Karin Bijsterveld (No. 277-45-003). The article was prepared during, and the analysis informed by Anna Harris' current research on digital doctors funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (No. 678390 ).
Funding Information:
We thank the participants in both of our studies for generously giving their time and for sharing their experiences and skills. Funding for Study 1 was provided to Sarah Maslen by the University of Canberra. Study 2 was funded by a Dutch Research Council NWO Vici Grant entitled Sonic Skills: Sound and Listening in the Development of Science, Technology, Medicine (1920?now) awarded to Karin Bijsterveld (No. 277-45-003). The article was prepared during, and the analysis informed by Anna Harris' current research on digital doctors funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (No. 678390).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021
Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2021/5
Y1 - 2021/5
N2 - Sociological contributions on digital health have acknowledged the enduring significance of sensory work in diagnosis and practices of care. Previous explorations of these digital and sensory entanglements have focused separately on healthcare providers or patients/caregivers, rarely bringing these worlds together. Our analysis, based on the collation of ethnographic fieldwork in clinics, medical schools, and homes in Australia, offers rare insights into caregiver and practitioner perspectives. We interrogate the work involved in digital-sensory becoming, as caregivers (in our case parents) learn to assign diagnostic meaning to potential childhood disease. Working with Karen Barad's concept of ‘intra-action’, we demonstrate how diagnostic knowing is enacted between practitioners, parents, senses, and devices. We identify seven aspects of digital-sensory learning: attention to the change from normal; testing/searching for signs and symptoms; confirmation and direction from more experienced others; mimicry; analogy/metaphor; digital archiving; and reference to validated digitised signs. We found that this learning does not take place discretely in the clinic or at home. Doctors and parents both do digital-sensory work to register, co-witness, and mutually enact disease by interpreting signs and symptoms together in their caregiving intra-actions. Our article also champions collated ethnography as a methodological approach for making sense of complex assemblages in healthcare.
AB - Sociological contributions on digital health have acknowledged the enduring significance of sensory work in diagnosis and practices of care. Previous explorations of these digital and sensory entanglements have focused separately on healthcare providers or patients/caregivers, rarely bringing these worlds together. Our analysis, based on the collation of ethnographic fieldwork in clinics, medical schools, and homes in Australia, offers rare insights into caregiver and practitioner perspectives. We interrogate the work involved in digital-sensory becoming, as caregivers (in our case parents) learn to assign diagnostic meaning to potential childhood disease. Working with Karen Barad's concept of ‘intra-action’, we demonstrate how diagnostic knowing is enacted between practitioners, parents, senses, and devices. We identify seven aspects of digital-sensory learning: attention to the change from normal; testing/searching for signs and symptoms; confirmation and direction from more experienced others; mimicry; analogy/metaphor; digital archiving; and reference to validated digitised signs. We found that this learning does not take place discretely in the clinic or at home. Doctors and parents both do digital-sensory work to register, co-witness, and mutually enact disease by interpreting signs and symptoms together in their caregiving intra-actions. Our article also champions collated ethnography as a methodological approach for making sense of complex assemblages in healthcare.
KW - Caregivers
KW - Digital media
KW - Enskillment
KW - Ethnography
KW - Diagnosis
KW - Materiality
KW - Medicine
KW - Senses
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85104477346&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113927
DO - 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113927
M3 - Article
SN - 0277-9536
VL - 277
SP - 1
EP - 10
JO - Social Science and Medicine
JF - Social Science and Medicine
ER -