Nurses resisting information technology

TLDR

Nurse resistance to workplace technology has been understudied sociologically, encompassing both the technology itself and the ideas and practices it embodies. The study describes and analyzes nurses’ resistance to computer system implementation based on semistructured interviews with 31 nurses in three UK NHS hospitals. The authors conducted semistructured interviews with 31 nurses across three UK NHS hospitals to describe and analyze resistance to computer system implementation. Resistance was not successful in preventing implementation but persisted, manifesting as attempts to minimize use, extensive criticism, and rare outright refusal, best described as “resistive compliance.”.

Abstract

Resistance in the workplace, by nurses, has not been extensively studied from a sociological perspective. In this paper, nurses' resistance to the implementation and use of computer systems is described and analysed, on the basis of semistructured interviews with 31 nurses in three UK NHS hospitals. While the resistance was not "successful", in that it did not prevent the implementation of the systems, it nonetheless persisted. Resistance took a wide variety of forms, including attempts to minimise or "put off" use of the systems, and extensive criticism of the systems, though outright refusal to use them was very rare. Resistance was as much about the ideas and ways of working that the systems embodied as it was about the actual technology being used. The patterns of resistance can best be summed up by the phrase "resistive compliance".