|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The movie A Few Good Men hinges on an anecdote about several soldiers who perform a "code red" on another solider, during which he dies. A code red is an illegal informal punishment-harassment in the manner of a rough fraternity joke. The death of the solider causes an investigation; the commanding officer is suspected of deliberately ordering the code. The harassing soldiers defend themselves by saying that they could not have been ordered to perform a code red because that was forbidden by the manual of conduct. The denouement of the film has the prosecuting attorney closely questioning one defendant, roughly as follows: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Does he do everything by the book?" |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Does the book contain all knowledge about how to conduct oneself in military life?'' |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Did he have breakfast this morning?" |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Does the manual specify how to get to the mess hall, or where it is located?" |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"QEDthe manual does not contain all knowledge." |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Bringing this caring work out into the open and differentiating its components has encountered problems from the nurses themselves. In naming and differentiating someone's work, there is a fine line between being too obvious and being too vague once one has decided to take on naming as a central task. If the task that is brought under the glare of enlightenment science is too obvious and mundane, then some nurses who are testing the system find it insulting. To tell veteran nurses to shake down a thermometer after taking a temperature puts them in a childlike position. Some experienced nurses, encountering interventions they felt were too obvious, have called them NSS"no shit, Sherlock" interventionsit does not take a Sherlock Holmes to realize that nurses have to do this! Creating difference by cutting up the continuum of duties that make up "looking after the patient's welfare" is thus sociologically as well as phenomenologically and philosophically difficult. One must be explicit enough for the novices, yet not insulting to the veterans. Reading the NIC minutes, one is frequently reminded of ethnomethodological texts: just how much com- |
|
|
|
|
|