Magali Camelio-Aubac's thesis defense
Ms Magali CAMELIO-AUBAC publicly defended her thesis entitled " Le travall de l'infirmière libérale au prisme du smartphone" (" The work of the self-employed nurse through the prism of the smartphone"). directed by Mr. Laurent Visier, on Thursday December 12, 2024 at 2:00 pm, at 2 rue de l'école de médecine 34000 Montpellier, Salle du Conseil.
Composition of the proposed jury
Mr Laurent VISIER - University of Montpellier - Thesis supervisor
Mrs Aurore MARGAT - Sorbonne Paris Nord University - Rapporteur
Mr Olivier COUSIN - University of Bordeaux - Rapporteur
Mrs Geneviève ZOÏA - University of Montpellier - Examiner
Summary:
There are almost 99,000 self-employed nurses in France, yet this population has been little studied by researchers in the humanities and social sciences, so part of their work remains invisible. To explore the social interactions of private practice nurses, we chose to use an everyday object - the smartphone. This hybrid object has colonized our lives, with almost 87% of French people equipped with one. It has become the gateway to communication. The smartphone is an amplifier of signals and skills. It is also an artifact that changes the nature of the tasks performed by humans. In this exploratory research, we will look more closely at the characteristics of liberal nurses, their history, what differentiates them from hospital nurses, but above all we will explore what the cell phone reveals about their work. How do they use the smartphone? Does this cognitive artifact alter their relationship to time, their daily routine, and their interactions with patients and other caregivers? Using ethnological observations of nursing rounds, sociological interviews and social network surveys, the grounded theorizing method enabled us to uncover certain facets of liberal nursing practice. Using an interactionist approach, we will examine, through the prism of the smartphone, liberal nurses' relationships with patients and other actors in homecare. The smartphone raises the question of how codes of civility governing first contact and the entire care relationship are changing. Self-presentation is modified when it passes through the written filter of SMS or e-mail. It is deprived of its non-verbal attributes, but enriched with new functionalities such as emoticons and the traceability of exchanges. The smartphone also reveals the values and power issues underlying the selection of patients by private nurses, when making appointments. Power relations between professionals are also revealed by this technological tool. It doesn't alter the nature of professional relations, but it does offer new communication opportunities that the players seize to negotiate the boundaries of their respective territories. By making it possible to be reached at any time and in any place, this artifact has blurred the traditional separations between professional and personal time-spaces. The smartphone invites the many demands of the outside world into nurses' private lives and into patients' homes. They are torn between their different public and private roles. We'll be looking at the tactics nurses use to resolve this equation. Then, we'll focus on handovers, which are an important part of nurses' secondary socialization. Nurses use the various lay communication channels offered to them by the smartphone. By mixing written functionalities, oral messages, emoticons and images, the smartphone fits into Jack Goody's graphic reason. Finally, we'll look at the use of the Internet, including the YouTube platform, to acquire and update nursing knowledge. This new mode of learning is subtly combined with nurses' tradition of disseminating knowledge orally.
