Nursing Inquiry 2003; 10(4): 257–269 Feature Nurses resisting information technology

Resistance in the workplace, by nurses, has not been extensively studied from a sociological perspective. In this paper, nurses’ resistance to the implementation and use of computer systems is described and analysed, on the basis of semistructured interviews with 31 nurses in three UK NHS hospitals. While the resistance was not ‘successful’, in that it did not prevent the implementation of the systems, it nonetheless persisted. Resistance took a wide variety of forms, including attempts to minimise or ‘put off ’ use of the systems, and extensive criticism of the systems, though outright refusal to use them was very rare. Resistance was as much about the ideas and ways of working that the systems embodied as it was about the actual technology being used. The patterns of resistance can best be summed up by the phrase ‘resistive compliance’. Key words: computerised care planning, resistance. Studies of women resisting in the workplace remain, as Lee-Treweek (1997) points out, comparatively rare. The study by Lee-Treweek, of resistance by care workers in a nursing home, though they were not themselves nurses, has some parallels with the workers in this study, in terms of both the setting and the kinds of work that they did. Some more recent studies on workplace resistance have shown what