Walking the line: Mindfulness with IT in hospital medication routines

Abstract

This paper addresses the dilemma that organizations face when they introduce information technology (IT) to standardize and guide operations and improve performance, while also supporting staff mindfulness in using IT and questioning it, to safeguard against errors. People are warned to be mindful in using the information provided by IT, yet IT may contribute to their mindlessness. Organizational operations involve routine work, where work is distributed across roles, in space and time. To fully understand mindfulness or mindlessness with IT at work it is necessary to consider the routines in which they are embedded. We sought to investigate what factors might influence mindfulness or mindlessness with IT in the context of organizational routines. We carried out an in-depth study of clinicians using technology during medications routines in a UK hospital. The IT in this context aimed to guide and standardize clinical work to improve medication safety. The study uncovered several factors influencing mindfulness and mindlessness with IT: not only the IT design but also task design, individual experience and history of IT use, distribution of work, and the situation at hand. These are interacting influences on mindfulness and mindlessness with IT, each embodying a tension, as each may influence both mindfulness and mindlessness. The distribution of work and the dynamics of the routine over time mean that individuals in the routine may (mindlessly) entrust mindfulness in using IT to others, or to other moments in time. The study highlights the complexity of achieving mindfulness with IT in organizations, and a nuanced relation between mindfulness and IT in a routine work context.