Technology and humane nursing care: (ir)reconcilable or invented difference?

Aim(s) of the payer. This paper questions the validity of a boundary presum ed to exist between technology and humane care. It argues the need for reco nciliation of presumed tension(s) between technology and person focused car e and the need to reconsider our ways of understanding the relations betwee n technology and nursing. Background/rationale. Recent scholarship in the social sciences related to reproductive and imaging technologies and emergency resuscitation are exami ned and arguments are presented that question the appropriateness of a huma nist view that emphasizes technology on the nonhuman and nonnatural side of a human/nonhuman, nature/artifice divide. It is argued that what determine s experiences such as dehumanization is not technology per se but how indiv idual technologies are used and operate in specific user contexts, the mean ings that are attributed to them, how individuals or cultural groups define what is human, and the organizational, human, political and economic techn ological system (technique) that creates rationale and efficient order with in nursing, health care and society. Conclusion. The paper concludes by asking whether the commonplace appeal to resolve tensions between humane care and technology has erroneously highli ghted technology as the reason for impersonal care, and encourages re-exami nation of the relationship(s) between technology, humane care and nursing p ractice.