Governing the Operating Room List

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the power relationships in communication between nurses and surgeons as they struggle to structure work activities around the operating room list; that is, the schedule of surgical procedures to be performed each day in operating rooms. Drawing upon data from a larger ethnographic study that explored communication in operating rooms (Riley and Manias, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006a, b), in this chapter we deconstruct the discursive communication practices that surround the operating list using the Foucauldian (1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1982) tools of discourse, power, knowledge and subjectivity. It is argued that nurses are positioned between competing organizational discourses that privilege time and efficiency and the hierarchical dominance of surgeons. However, despite this complex positioning, nurses challenge surgeons’ traditional and hierarchical right to determine the order of the operating list, and position themselves as active subjects in ways that challenge the traditional, handmaiden image of nurses who work in this setting.KeywordsOperating RoomHospital CommunicationClinical NurseIndividual SurgeonDiscursive PracticeThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.