Acting in Anaesthesia
Ethnographic Encounters with Patients, Practitioners and Medical Technologies

This book examines anaesthetic practice from the sociological perspective of science and technology studies.

Dawn Goodwin (Author)

9780521882064, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 16 February 2009

204 pages
23.4 x 16.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.47 kg

'[This book] is based on ethnographic research, both detailed, real-time observations and in-depth interviews, but it also benefits from Goodwin's past experiences as an anaesthetic and recovery nurse. It is obvious that she knows her ethnographic field very well, a knowledge which allows her to provide the reader with very detailed and helpful descriptions of otherwise confusing medical procedures.' Ericka Johnson, Technoscienza

In recent years, evidence-based medicine (EBM), clinical governance and professional accountability have become increasingly significant in shaping the organisation and delivery of healthcare. However, these notions all build upon and exemplify the idea of human-centred, individual action. In this book, Dawn Goodwin suggests that such models of practice exaggerate the extent to which practitioners are able to predict and control the circumstances and contingencies of healthcare. Drawing on ethnographic material, Goodwin explores the way that 'action' unfolds in a series of empirical cases of anaesthetic and intensive care practice. Anaesthesia configures a relationship between humans, machines and devices that transforms and redistributes capacities for action and thereby challenges the figure of a rational, intentional, acting individual. This book elucidates the ways in which various entities (machines, tools, devices and unconscious patients as well as healthcare practitioners) participate, and how actions become legitimate and accountable.

1. Understanding anaesthesia: theory and practice
2. Refashioning bodies, reshaping agency
3. Accounting for incoherent bodies
4. Teamwork, participation, and boundaries
5. Embodied knowledge: coordinating spaces, bodies, and tools
6. Recognising agency, legitimating participation, and acting accountably in anaesthesia.

Subject Areas: Anthropology [JHM], Sociology & anthropology [JH]