Thesis Defense by Magali Camelio-Aubac

Magali CAMELIO-AUBACpublicly defended her thesis entitled "The work of private nurses through the lens of smartphones,"supervised byLaurent Visier, on Thursday, December 12, 2024, at 2:00 p.m., at 2 rue de l'école de médecine 34000 Montpellier, in the Council Room.

Composition of the proposed jury

Mr.Laurent VISIER– University of Montpellier – Thesis supervisor

Ms. Aurore MARGAT – Sorbonne Paris Nord University – Rapporteur

Mr. Olivier COUSIN – University of Bordeaux – Rapporteur

Ms. Geneviève ZOÏA – University of Montpellier – Examiner

Summary:

There are nearly 99,000 nurses working independently in France, yet this population has been little studied by researchers in the humanities and social sciences, meaning that part of their work remains invisible. In order to explore the social interactions of independent nurses, we chose to use an everyday object: the smartphone. This hybrid device has colonized our lives, with nearly 87% of French people owning one. It has become the gateway to communication. The smartphone amplifies signals and skills. It is also an artifact that changes the nature of the tasks performed by humans. In this exploratory research, we will study more specifically the characteristics of independent 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 smartphones? Does this cognitive artifact change their relationship to time, their daily lives, their interactions with patients and other caregivers? Through ethnological observations of nursing rounds, sociological interviews, and surveys on social media, the grounded theory method has allowed us to discover certain facets of private nursing practice. Using an interactionist approach, we will study, through the prism of the smartphone, the relationships of private nurses with patients and other home care providers. Smartphones raise questions about the evolution of the codes of civility governing initial contact and the entire care relationship. Self-presentation is altered when filtered through text messages or emails. It is stripped of its nonverbal attributes but enriched with new features such as emojis and the traceability of exchanges. Smartphones also reveal 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 does not change the nature of professional relationships, but offers new opportunities for communication that stakeholders seize upon to negotiate the boundaries of their respective territories. By making it possible to be reachable anytime, anywhere, this device has blurred the traditional boundaries between professional and personal space and time. Smartphones invite numerous external demands into the private lives of nurses and into patients' homes. Nurses are torn between their different public and private roles. We will study the tactics nurses have developed to resolve this equation. Then, we will focus on handovers, which are an important part of nurses' secondary socialization. The methods of handover are very diverse, with private nurses using the various secular communication channels offered to them by this new device, the smartphone. By combining written features, voice messages, emojis, and images, smartphones fit into Jack Goody's graphic reason. Finally, we will discuss the use of the Internet, including YouTube, for acquiring and updating nursing knowledge. This new mode of learning is subtly linked to the tradition of oral knowledge sharing among nurses.