A Worker-Driven Common Information Space: Interventions into a Digital Future
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A Worker-Driven Common Information Space: Interventions into a Digital Future Naja Holten Møller1* , Maren Gausdal Eriksen1 & Claus Bossen2 *1University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark; 2Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark Abstract. This paper empirically investigates a Common Information Space (CIS) established by medical secretaries so they could support each other during their workplace’s transition to a new comprehensive electronic health record, called the Healthcare Platform (HP). With the new system, the secretaries were expected to become partially obsolete, as doctors were to take on a significant load of the clerical work, such as documenting and coding. To handle their changing work situation, the medical secretaries set up an online support group in parallel to, but independent from, the official implementation support organization. The paper’s contribution is a characterization of the support group as a common information space (CIS), and analysis of the specific qualities of a worker-driven CIS as a forum for 1) articulation work required for re-grounding changing tasks and responsibilities, 2) archiving discussions (posts) and guidelines to further their collective interpretation, and 3) creating a space independent of management for employees to work out their new role in an organization in a situation of transition and change. Key Words: Workers’ self-organizing, Common information space, Clerical work, Non-clinicians, Epic, Common ground, Electronic health record, Future of work, Datafication, Digital ethnography, Medical secretaries
1. Introduction This paper explores how a group of professionals (medical secretaries) set up a Common Information Space (CIS) in response to their organization’s transition to a comprehensive electronic health record, called the Healthcare Platform (HP) and their re-grounding of their changing tasks and responsibilities. The HP integrated several previous IT healthcare systems into one suite and allowed for data-driven practices. It also entailed new divisions of work across two of Denmark’s five health regions, affecting in particular the group of hospital clerks comprised of medical secretaries. We focus on how medical secretaries used a closed Facebook group (from here on referred to as the Support Group) to respond to the dramatic change in their work situation; we conceptualize this Support Group as a worker-driven CIS. The medical secretaries negotiated possible new roles for themselves through long-term and sustained discussion: The better experts we are [in terms of the new HP], the less can we be ignored and the better can we opt in on new, great, and exciting tasks. To sit with our hands idle and signal to them [doctors and nurses] that they have to learn it themselves, is
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only to our disadvantage. We have to be innovative and become the experts again. For god’s sake, we cannot become inactive or passive. We are the red thread in a white world [of doctors] with or without HP. (Support Group 2017) Th
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