‘What Makes It Nice Is Also What Makes It Difficult’

Abstract

In health care the appropriation of new technology to assist and improve the diagnosis, treatment, and care of patients can be challenging. Based on observations and interviews with nurses and midwives during the early implementation process of a new interactive and technologically improved patient room, this article examines how health care professionals make sense of their work in the new patient room as it becomes enacted in their everyday work practice. We find that the technologically improved room is met with some resistance by the nurses and midwives. We argue that by exploring appropriation of technology as a social process of sense-making (Weick 1995), it can be revealed how meanings assigned to the new room influences actions and interactions with it.