Governing the Operating Room List

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the power relationships in communication between nurses and surgeons as they struggle to structure work activities around the operating room list; that is, the schedule of surgical procedures to be performed each day in operating rooms. Drawing upon data from a larger ethnographic study that explored communication in operating rooms (Riley and Manias, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006a, b), in this chapter we deconstruct the discursive communication practices that surround the operating list using the Foucauldian (1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1982) tools of discourse, power, knowledge and subjectivity. It is argued that nurses are positioned between competing organizational dis..