This article considers changes in healthcare professional work afforded by technology. It uses the sociology of professionals’ literature together with a theory of affordances to examine how and when technology allows change in healthcare professional work. The study draws from research into...

This paper explores how national Electronic Patient Record (EPR) systems are customized in local settings and, in particular, how the context of their origin plays out with the context of their use. It shows how representations of healthcare organizations and of local clinical practice are built...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between performance monitoring technology and accountability in electronic government initiatives. Specifically, it aims to investigate how performance monitoring technologies are deployed in electronic government and the...

This report provides and interim account of some aspects of research undertaken in to the adoptions and use of the electronic prescription service (EPS) in England. The role of EPS is a fundamentally simple one. It allows the transmission of prescription messages and digitally-signed...

Mishler (The discourse of medicine. The dialectics of medical interviews. Norwood, NJ: Ablex), applying Habermas's theory of Communicative Action to medical encounters, showed how the struggle between the voice of medicine and the voice of the lifeworld fragmented and suppressed patients'...

Recent policy changes in the UK such as deregulation of prescribed medicines and the introduction of telephone helpline services are intended to promote self-treatment. Drawing on interviews with, and consultations between, 35 patients and 20 general practitioners, we use Kleinman's (Patients...

In National Health Service hospitals in the UK the introduction of new drugs is controlled by a local Drug and Therapeutics Committee (DTC), which is expected to apply the principles of evidence-based medicine (EBM). In the light of growing expenditure on drugs, there is interest in how the...

The traditional paternalistic model of medical decision-making, in which doctors make decisions on behalf of their patients, has increasingly come to be seen as outdated. Moreover, the role of the patient in the consultation has been emphasised, notably through the adoption of 'patient-centred'...