Date/Time
Thursday
5 Apr 2012
4:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Location
470 Stephens Hall

Event Type
Colloquium

Rachel Prentice
Cornell University

“I’m missing a sponge,” a nurse declares to an operating team. Work stops. Hands emerge from a patient’s abdomen. The search for a tiny piece of gauze begins. The nurse’s on-going count of sponges used and sponges discarded does not match. This simple form of accounting control is one among many control techniques used to constrain surgical action and protect the patient. Ethnographic and philosophical constructions of good medical practice have tended to share a focus on the senior surgeon as rational decision-maker and head of the surgical hierarchy or on the team of surgeons as a machine. In this paper, I expand the focus of ethnographic attention to include surgeons, anesthesiologists, and nurses. By examining practices of control at work across the operating team, I show how the entire team contributes to protecting the patient and constraining the actions of others on the team. I also show how the desire for control in the operating simultaneously can guide rational practices and seemingly irrational research projects.