From attention to attunement: Data-driven efficiency and embodied care in the intensive care unit

Publikation: Beitrag in FachzeitschriftForschungsartikelBeigetragenBegutachtung

Beitragende

  • Chiara Carboni - , Erasmus University Rotterdam (Autor:in)
  • Rik Wehrens - , Erasmus University Rotterdam (Autor:in)
  • Romke van der Veen - , Erasmus University Rotterdam (Autor:in)
  • Antoinette de Bont - , Tilburg University (Autor:in)

Abstract

Machine learning-driven efficiency is increasingly cast as a way to insure the future sustainability of understaffed healthcare systems. This article offers a glimpse into the potential practical repercussion of efficiency achieved through machine learning by examining how nurses’ practices of care provision are reappraised under machine learning logics. Building on a 4-month ethnographic fieldwork in the context of an innovation project in Dutch intensive care units (ICUs), this article centers, simultaneously, ICU nurses’ daily work, and the problem definitions and assumptions guiding the development of a machine learning dashboard for ICU ward-capacity management. It argues that nurses’ practices are centrally guided by attunement: embodied, indeterminate, affectively laden knowledge-making and action. Conversely, the dashboard torques these practices into a matter of attention: the passive, cognitive filtering of stimuli, disconnected from action. While paving the way for efficiency narratives, attention disregards nurses’ invisible and data work, and it might translate into labor intensification. This article thus proposes that moving from attention to attunement might both do justice to the complexity of nurses’ practices and provide more empirically solid policy foundations in the wake of healthcare workforce shortages.

Details

OriginalspracheEnglisch
FachzeitschriftScience, technology, & human values : ST&HV
PublikationsstatusElektronische Veröffentlichung vor Drucklegung - 17 Okt. 2025
Peer-Review-StatusJa
Extern publiziertJa

Externe IDs

Mendeley ae9347a6-1996-3e85-a30f-3ae652346d18
Scopus 105019550883

Schlagworte

Schlagwörter

  • acute care, attention, clinical practice, efficiency, machine learning, nursing