Tools of the trade: analyzing technology as object in nursing

Key components of nursing practice are the things nurses use in their work. Despite the importance that technological objects have played in both practicing and representing the practice of nursing, they have received only tangential attention in empirical and ethical studies of nursing practice and in theories of nursing. In this paper, technology is analyzed in its mode of manifestation as "object." An analytic emphasis on technology as object is necessary to draw attention to and garner respect for the independent force that objects exert in human/machine interactions. In addition, giving conceptual primacy to the material manifestation of technology can help to clarify (even as it raises other questions about) the long-standing and somewhat bittersweet relationship between nursing and technology.