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Swift Transport versus Information Gathering: Telemedicine and New Tensions in the Ambulance Service

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Journal of Contemporary Ethnography

Published online on

Abstract

Swift transport used to be the predominant way ambulance services provided care. During the past few decades, advanced information and communication technologies have increased the amount of patient information that ambulance crews can transmit to hospitals. The ambulance service has thus, in principle, been transformed from a swift transport unit into a complex information-gathering unit. The new telemedicine technologies available to crews are linked to demands concerning organizational changes and alterations in work procedures that challenge traditional ways of providing "good" ambulance care. In this article, we draw on both ethnographic observations and concepts from the field of science and technology studies to demonstrate how established work practices and complex local situations format the ambulance crews’ use of information-gathering technologies. We highlight how ambulance crews employ strategies of localization, including taming and deliberate nonuse of telemedicine technologies, to align these technologies with their established stance about how everyday ambulance care is best implemented.