Using video observation to gain insight into complex clinical work practices.

Abstract

Experience shows that the precondition for development of successful health-information-technologies (HIT) is a thorough insight into clinical work practices. In contemporary clinical work practices, clinical work and health information technology are closely integrated. Research within Virtual Centre for Health Informatics at Aalborg University, Denmark have during recent years focused on video observation to supplementing traditional ethnographical research methods in providing insight into complex clinical work practices. The objective of this paper is to argue for the potentials of the video observation method to inform and to improve HIT development compared to traditional ethnographic methods. Based on several studies conducted within the healthcare sector, we find, that the video observation method is superior to other ethnographical research methods when it comes to rapidly disclosing the complexity in clinical sociomaterial work practices. We also find that the video techniques used in the healthcare context allows us to revisit the field of observation through the data, to broaden our initial focus and to share data with both the clinical staff involved and other researchers. Hence, it provides us a more in depth insight in the complex clinical sociomaterial work practices than when observing by the use of pen and paper.