Practising Knowing: Emergence(y) teleologies

Abstract

This article presents a meta-disciplinary and institutional framework of practices used by nurses and doctors to manage the indeterminacy of knowing in emergency departments (EDs) in Australia. We draw on Schatzkian perspectives of how practices prevail and reflect particular site ontologies. We posit that nurses and doctors draw on a repertoire of practices to finesse their knowing at patients’ bedsides: they practise knowing. Drawing on existing practice knowledges (old learnings) they tailor them in the ED (new workplace learnings). This suggests that learning (practices) in the ED is teleological and emergent. This alerts us to new ways of thinking about attachments to practice knowledges, or ‘the teleological–affective structuring’ of practices (Schatzki, 2006, Organization Studies, 27, 1864), and its implications for organizational learning.

Keywords:

• practising
• knowledge
• knowing
• medicine
• practices
• organizational learning

Notes

1. Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage project LP0775435, Emergency Communication: Addressing the challenges in healthcare discourses and practices.

2. Hospitals linked to universities and therefore to training doctors, nurses and other allied health workers.

3. Except for telemedicine (Nicolini, 2011), where doctors, nurses and patients are notnecessarily geographically co-located.