Marlot Kuiper

217 Figure 16: An operating theatre In chapters five and six, I illustrated how the registration of the checklist in Plainsboro is only loosely coupled with the actual checking with the patient. For several, mostly practical reasons, the registration of the checklist has been done before the actual checking with the patient. Literally, the behaviour patterns as prescribed by the rule-embedded artefact are distanced from the location where these actual activities have to take place. The computer that embeds the information system EZIS is positioned at the back of the operation theatre. As a consequence, ‘checking’ and ‘registration’ become disentangled. Observation notes from this and previous chapters show how checking with the patient and the team in Plainsboro were only ‘loosely coupled’ with the registration in the computer. It is simply not possible to bring the computer to the surgical table, or the other way around. With the whiteboards on the contrary, this is the case. The tabloid-sized whiteboard can easily be transported throughout the operating theatre. But, as indicated, it is of great importance to not look at artefacts in isolation, but analyse their relations in the arrangement. The whiteboards afford to bring to the surgical table, show to the patient, and tick off the boxes, but in relation to other artefactual representations its additional value remains mostly unclear as whiteboards do not allow for registration. 7