what are the good and bad effects of technological advances in nursing practice??

Thunderwolf, MSN, RN · Dec 8, 2005

Thread moved to Graduate Student Nurse forum since member is writing thesis.

llg, PhD, RN · Dec 8, 2005

I wrote my doctoral dissertation on a related topic back in 1997 and found that very few people write anything negative about technology. It appears that the overwhelming majority of people who chose to study and write about technology are people who are really "into" technology: that makes sense. But then ... those people who are "really into" technology technology rarely look at it with an objective, critical eye. If they are not "supporters" of most technology, they lose the support of their peers. (I have found that out first hand.) That phenomenon seriously hampers the devevlopment of unbiased academic work on the subject.

While working on my PhD throught the mid-1990's, I "lived" with all the nursing literature on technology, doing an extensive search for anything published that was not a "chearleading" article. I found very little. I haven't kept up with all the recent literature diligently, but I keep my eyes open for relevant articles that give a balanced view -- and have continued to find very little. There is a guy that used to be at Florida Atlantic university who writes philosophical articles about technology -- and another in Australia --- but I can't remember either of their names off the top of my head.

Pulling my old dissertation from my shelf and looking at my references, I see references by ... Carnevali (1985), Cooper (1993), Jones & Alexander (1993), Locsin (1995), Ray (1987), Topf (1994), Walters (1995).

My suggestion is that you phyisically go to a good nursing library that would have most of the major journals in which nursing philosophers (and other serious scholars) would publish. Using a combination of computer searches and physically browsing both the journals and the books in the stacks, you would have your best chance of finding the best stuff.

Good luck! Let me know how it turns out.

llg