| Autor: |
Grønning A; Department of Design, Media and Educational Science, University of Southern Denmark, Odense M, Denmark., Simonsen LM; Research Unit of General Practice, Department of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Odense C, Denmark., Lüchau EC; Research Unit of General Practice, Department of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Odense C, Denmark., Hvidt EA; Research Unit of General Practice, Department of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Odense C, Denmark., Klausen M; Department of Design, Media and Educational Science, University of Southern Denmark, Odense M, Denmark. |
| Abstrakt: |
In this study, we discuss how email consultations in general practice operate as a temporal technology, transforming working conditions and power relations between general practitioners (GPs) and patients. We draw on empirical material from Denmark in the form of a set of semi-structured interviews with 53 patients and 15 GPs, including two focus group discussions with 17 GPs. Our theoretical point of departure stems primarily from media theorist Sarah Sharma's (2014) concept of power-chronography, which describes how power is embedded in temporal relations and everyday life and secondarily from sociologist, Judy Wajcman's (2015) concept of multiple temporal landscapes. Patients and GPs calibrate their own time and attune their mutual time according to their expectations and ideas about the other party's time. The patient and the GP can both be viewed as 'time workers' and the email consultation as a digital technology fostering the recalibration of one person's time to that of another, requiring significant labour. The email consultation rearranges the GP-patient boundaries and thereby the power relations. Health institutions ought to consider whose time and labour is being 'saved' with digital systems. |
