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Safety as working practice: technical objects, professional visions and communication processes
Journal Title: SOCIOLOGIA DEL LAVORO  
Author/s: Attila Bruni 
Year:  2013 Issue: 130 Language: Italian 
Pages:  17 Pg. 52-68 FullText PDF:  287 KB
DOI:  10.3280/SL2013-130004
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The paper proposes to analyze and interpret safety as an element encapsulated in everyday working practices and, thus, emerging from everyday work. On the basis of the data collected during two months of ethnographic observations of work in an operating theatre (a “risky” setting, by definition), the paper shows how different elements (technical objects, professional visions and statuses, communication styles and processes) participate in materializing and giving strength to safety, which becomes part of everyday, though expert, working practices. Finally, concentrating on the ways the safety of patients and clinicians is imbricated in everyday work, the paper argues about the impossibility of improving safety in working contexts, without improving everyday working conditions.
Keywords: Work practices, safety, operating room, ethnography, professional vision, technical objects

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Attila Bruni, Safety as working practice: technical objects, professional visions and communication processes in "SOCIOLOGIA DEL LAVORO " 130/2013, pp. 52-68, DOI:10.3280/SL2013-130004

   

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