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Rick Iedema (University of Technology, Sydney): Anthropotechnics – Practising the improbable
This talk reflects on the ideas discussed in Peter Sloterdijk’s recent book Du muβt dein Leben ändern: Über Anthropotechnik. The main thesis of the book is that humankind is entangled in aspirational imperatives that drive people to pursue the ‘not-yet-done/thought/said’ as ways of developing immunity against adversity. I then turn to health care and instrumentalise Sloterdijk’s ‘aspirational imperative’ for how we understand, teach and realise patient safety. Using filmed examples from our hospital-based video-ethnographic projects to bring to the fore both the social and the adaptive dimensions of safety, I conclude that the visualization of practice is a critical anthropotechnic resource for intensifying frontline practitioners’ adaptive capacity, for enabling them to appreciate the significance of experimenting with the improbable, and for developing an immunity to the rising complexity of contemporary health care.
Rick Iedema is a Research Professor in Organisational Communication, at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and Director of the Centre for Health Communication at the University of Technology Sydney. His research focuses on how clinicians communicate about their work with other clinicians, with patients and with their families. His 2006-7 work on Open Disclosure (clinicians disclosing incidents to patients and families) led to Australian Health Ministers' agreeing to nationalise Open Disclosure policy. His 2008 work on Clinical Handover is drawing international interest from hospitals and health research organisations in the Netherlands, USA and the UK. In seeking to problematise conventional social scientific approaches to analysis and knowledge production, his work draws on film-making of in situ communication processes, and involves practitioners and patients in making sense of the processes thus captured, and collaboratively imagining and realising new process possibilities. His most recent book publications include Discourses of Hospital Communication (Palgrave, edited, 2007), Identity Trouble (with Carmen Coulthard, Palgrave, edited, 2008) and Managing Processes in Health Services (with Ros Sorensen, Elsevier, edited, 2008). He publishes his articles in, among others, Social Science & Medicine, Sociology of Health & Illness and Organization Studies.
To attend please contact Dawn Coton: dawn.coton@wbs.ac.uk 024 76524503