Soc 101 Nurses and Routinization Analysis

Routinization is an organized system of procedures and patterns over an extended period of time that people closely follow. In the case of a hospital, the jobs of nurses are part of routinization. It is important to routinize tasks in a hospital because the unexpected or upsetting events that arise need to become “ordinary and mundane” to a nurse. Nurses need to learn how to mentally and emotionally control themselves when faced with instances such as deformed newborns and witnessing leg amputations. They cannot be upset or panicked because this would negatively affect the patients. Thus for these reasons, nurses need to learn how to tackle these traumatic cases casually through routinization.

Routinization in a hospital involves four key aspects that revolve around learning the geography, language, techniques, and patients according to Chamblis. For learning the geography, the nurses must familiarize themselves with the physical setting of the hospital. For example, they must know where all the rooms, bathrooms, and hallways are so that they can casually move from place to place. Also they need to know where all the supplies are stored and how the hospital beds operate. Additionally, nurses need to know the social standards that accompany the physical setting of a hospital. For example, as Chamblis mentions nurses should know that people need to clean up their own coffee cups and that certain rooms/items are only allowed to be used by those of higher positions such as doctors. These types of social standards and patterns need to be applied in nurses’ daily tasks.

In learning the language, the nurses need to learn medical lingo and terminology not used in an average person’s everyday language in order to easily communicate with other nurses and doctors. For example, as Chamblis mentions nurses need to learn that CABG (pronounced cabbage) stands for coronary artery bypass graft, and they be able to respond to it when these types of words are thrown their way. Speaking in this language will also hinder patients from hearing long and intimidating medical words which could lead to them panicking about their condition. Also, hospital staff will use informal slang amongst themselves. For example, a dying person is “going down the tubes” or “circling the drain”. This type of informal slang is used to prevent patients from understanding and panicking, but also to avoid the alarm that can come from talking in a straight cut, matter-of-fact manner, almost as if euphemizing the situation.

In learning the techniques, the nurses need to know what exactly encompasses their job and what specific tasks they need to complete or else they might feel overwhelmed and make mistakes. Nurses have numerous tasks they need to attend to such as giving different medication to several different patients, giving bed baths, monitoring blood pressures, checking patient’s IV lines, delivering food trays, and other miscellaneous tasks that require organizational and technical skills. To go through a day without making mistakes, nurses need to familiarize themselves with the parameters of the job itself.

In learning the patients, nurses need to learn what type of patients there are and how to attend to each different type. According to Chamblis, currently a majority of patients fall under the illnesses of cancer, heart disease, COPD, and aids. Because of these reoccurring cases, nurses are able to familiarize themselves on how each type of patient is to be treated. For example, a cancer patient needs to receive surgery and then chemotherapy, and these types of patterns allow nurses to categorize and organize patients by what illness they have and proceed accordingly on how to care for them. Nurses also need to learn how to deal with patients and become familiar to seeing suffering people. This will allow them to become detached or desensitized, and then interactions with for example dying patients will not be as upsetting to the nurses which will allow them to carry on with their jobs and continue to attend to other patients and complete tasks. 

For the routinization of the nurses’ jobs through the four key concepts to be successful, nurses need to engage in a qualitative transformation in their thinking according to Chamblis. In other words, they need to reconstruct the way they think about events and people and how to relate them. For example, as Chamblis mentions, one nurse was not affected at all when her friend told her that her father was on oxygen. The nurse thought nothing of this event even though it was her friend’s father because several people and patients she cares for in the hospital are on oxygen. Ultimately, nurses need to reach the point at which their work does not mentally or emotionally bother them anymore, and this can serve as an indication that routinization has been successful.