Care at a Distance

Nightmares, promises and efficiencies in care and research
1. Introduction
The telecare hype
Lack of knowledge
Noise and dust
This study
Various telecare practices
Studying innovative technologies
The chapters
Part I: Norms and nightmares
2. Caring devices: About warm hands, cold technology, and making things fit
Warm care, cold technologies
What (un)makes a human?
Palliative care in Friesland
Situating matters of disease
Building relations through the white box
Devices do not love us
Fitting individuals
The notion of fitting
Care that does not fit
Modest aesthetics
3. The heart of the matter: Good nursing at a distance
Goodness of fit
The heart of good nursing
Good nursing in practice
The importance of space
Division of labour
Keeping up old standards: correcting telecare
Telecare as an improvement: changing norms
New tasks, new goals
Persistent values, shifting norms
Contestable norms
Part II: Knowledge and promises
4. Caring for the self? Enacting problems, solutions and forms of knowledge
Shaping problems
Enacted trouble: objective symptoms versus subjective experience
Articulating problems
Responding to problems
Enacting problems, engaging in self-care
Fitting logics
5. Knowing patients: On practical knowledge for living with chronic disease
The knowledge of patients
Knowing patients?
Tools for the case study: scientific versus practical knowledge
Practical knowledge of people with COPD
Introducing 'know-how'
Transporting knowledge
Technologies and translation
Coordinating knowledge
Knowing patients
Practical knowledge and webcams
Part III: Routines and efficiencies
6. Zooming in on webcams: On the workings of a modest technology
Doing invisible work
Webcam practices
'It is much more personal than the telephone'
Together in the same room
Trust, familiarity and intrusion
Building on existing relations
Magnifying relational distance
What webcams do
Shaping care practices
Modest technology
7. Economies of care: New routines, new tasks
What's in a routine?
Routine efficiency
Telecare and efficiency
The place of caring
Different technology and tasks
Interpretation routines
Old or new routines?
Treacherous routines
Efficiently organising messy practices
Conclusions: On studying innovation
8. Innovating care innovation
The politics of innovation
The object of research: innovative telecare practices
Research that does not fit
Fitting research
Uncontrolled field studies
The influence of users
The status of articulations: comparisons and involving others
The status of practical knowledge
Discussions unleashed by an uncontrolled field study
Close research

Acknowledgements
Appendix: Projects studied for this book
Notes
References
Index of names
Index of subjects