Acting in Anaesthesia

In recent years evidence-based medicine (EBM) clinical governance and professional accountability have become increasingly significant in shaping the organisation and delivery of healthcare. However these notions all build upon and exemplify the idea of human-centred individual action. In this book Dawn Goodwin suggests that such models of practice exaggerate the extent to which practitioners are able to predict and control the circumstances and contingencies of healthcare. Drawing on ethnographic material Goodwin explores the way that ''action'' unfolds in a series of empirical cases of anaesthetic and intensive care practice. Anaesthesia configures a relationship between humans machines and devices that transforms and redistributes capacities for action and thereby challenges the figure of a rational intentional acting individual. This book elucidates the ways in which various entities (machines tools devices and unconscious patients as well as healthcare practitioners) participate and how actions become legitimate and accountable.