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Book Cover
E-book
Author Berg, Marc

Title Rationalizing medical work : decision-support techniques and medical practices / Marc Berg
Published Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, ©1997

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Description 1 online resource (x, 238 pages) : illustrations
Series Inside technology
Inside technology.
Contents 1. The Withering Flower of Our Civilization: Reconceptualizing Postwar Medical Practice -- 2. Multiple Rationalities: The Different Voices of Decision-Support Techniques -- 3. Getting a Tool to Work: Disciplining a Practice to a Formalism -- 4. Of Nodes, Nurses, and Negotiations: The Localization of a Tool -- 5. Supporting Decision-Support Techniques: Medical Work and Formal Tools -- 6. Producing Tools and Practices
Summary "Our response to the skyrocketing cost and nonuniform delivery of medical care has been a call for the rationalizing of medical practice through decision-support techniques. These tools, which include protocols, decision analysis, and expert systems, have generated much debate. Advocates argue that they will make medical practice more rational, more uniform, and more efficient and that they will transform the "art" of medical work into a "science." Critics argue that formal tools cannot and should not supplant humans in most real-life tasks." "Marc Berg takes the issues raised by advocates and critics as points of departure for investigation, rather than as positions to choose from. Drawing on insights and methodologies from science and technology studies, he attempts to understand what "rationalizing medical practices" means: what these tools do and how they work in concrete medical practices. Rather than take a stand for or against decision-support techniques, he shows how they transform medical practices and discusses what is gained and what is lost." "Berg investigates how new discourses on medical work and its problems are linked to the development of decision-support tools. Studying the construction of several individual technologies, he looks at what medical work consists of and how the new technologies figure in and transform it. Although he focuses on decision-support techniques in the field of medicine, the issues he raises are relevant wherever rationalizing techniques are being debated or constructed. Touching upon broader issues of standardization, universality, localization, and the politics of technology, Berg addresses problems that are central to medical sociology, technology studies, and tool design."--Jacket
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 205-234) and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject Medicine -- Decision making
Nursing care plans.
Decision making -- Mathematical models.
Expert systems (Computer science)
Patient Care Planning
Decision Support Techniques
Expert Systems
MEDICAL -- Family & General Practice.
MEDICAL -- Osteopathy.
MEDICAL.
MEDICAL -- Holistic Medicine.
HEALTH & FITNESS -- Reference.
MEDICAL -- Essays.
MEDICAL -- Alternative Medicine.
HEALTH & FITNESS -- Holism.
Nursing care plans
Expert systems (Computer science)
Decision making -- Mathematical models
Medicine -- Decision making
Decision support systems.
Medische handelingen.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 0585002851
9780585002859
0262268191
9780262268196