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This article explores the relationship between technology and occupational identity based on working-life biographical interviews with older telecommunications engineers. In the construction of their own working-life biographical narratives, participants attached great importance to the technology with which they worked. The article contends that workers' relationship with technology can be more nuanced than either the sociology of technology literature or the sociology of work literature accommodates. Adopting the concept of affordances, it is argued that the physical nature of earlier electromechanical technology afforded engineers the opportunity to 'fix' things through the skilled application of tools and act as autonomous custodians of 'living' machines: factors that were inherent to their occupational identity. However, the change to digital technology denied the affordances to apply hands-on skill and undermined key elements of the engineering occupational identity. Rather than simply reflecting the nostalgic romanticizing of the past, the biographies captured deterioration in the material realities of work.
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PURPOSE: Previous studies indicate that the introduction of information and communication technology (ICT) in health care organizations impairs health care professional's working conditions and diminishes job discretion. Most of these studies, however, were designed to explore the influence of ICT exclusively on a single group of health care professionals and thereby did not consider the influence of the same technology on other groups of health care professionals. The aim of this article is to explore the influence of a fully integrated ICT system on both doctors and registered nurses within the same working environment: a high-tech hospital. METHODS: This is a cross-sectional study conducted in a high-tech Norwegian hospital. Data were collected in 2016. In total, 264 registered nurses and 172 doctors responded to a questionnaire on their working conditions and experiences with ICT in clinical work. Descriptive statistics, compare means, cross-tables, Chi-square and bivariate correlation analysis were used to analyze the data. Statistical significance was set at p < 0.05. RESULTS: The findings revealed differences in doctors' and registered nurses' working conditions. Registered nurses reported a statistically significant higher workload and better job content than doctors. There was no difference in job discretion between doctors and registered nurses. Both occupational groups experienced that the ICT system impairs patient contact and the quality of health services. We found statistically significant correlations between registered nurses' and doctors' experiences with ICT in clinical work and working conditions, whereof the strongest correlation was related to job discretion in clinical work. CONCLUSION: This study concludes that the impact of ICT on doctors' and registered nurses' working conditions in a hospital depends on the experiences of ICT in clinical work. In consequence, it is recommended to involve doctors and registered nurses in the implementation of ICT in hospitals.
RESUMEN
HyBeacons, novel DNA probes for ultra-rapid detection of single nucleotide polymorphisms, contain a fluorophore covalently attached via a linker group to an internal nucleotide. As the probe does not require a quencher or self-complementarity to function, this study investigates the molecular-level mechanism underlying the increase of fluorescence intensity on hybridization of HyBeacons with target DNA. Spectroscopic ultraviolet-visible and fluorimetric studies, combined with molecular dynamics simulations, indicate projection of the fluorophore moiety away from the target-probe duplex into aqueous solution, although specific linker-DNA interactions are populated. Based on evidence from this study, we propose that for HyBeacons, the mechanism of increased fluorescence on hybridization is due to disruption of quenching interactions in the single-stranded probe DNA between the fluorophore and nucleobases. Hybridization leads to an extended linker conformation, removing the fluorophore from the immediate vicinity of the DNA bases.