From storytelling to reporting : converted narratives

This paper delineates a perspective on knowing in practice that highlights the tension between narrative and codified forms of knowledge. Based on an in-depth study of the implementation of an electronic based record system for nurses, we demonstrate how both forms of knowledge are required to enable a coherent integration of work across different working shifts. We analyse the handover conference from being a collaborative and coherent story created by nurses present during the handover conference to become a story made by oncoming nurses reading of information found in the patient record. The notion of overview is identified as a common theme and precondition for nurses? ability to share knowledge. Our findings indicate that the handover conference, through the transformation, has drifted from being a highly collaborative effort to become an effort primarily emphasising the distributed nature of work. Yet, in our case mechanisms were established locally in order to build an overview as a part of the new handover conference. In the concluding parts of the paper, implications for the design and implementation of collaboration technologies are highlighted. In particular we emphasise the need to further explore the narrative (and collaborative) nature of nurses? work as the design related implications of such an approach seem largely uncharted.