This is a site about researching mindfulness and technology in healthcare, and especially in hospital settings. It belongs to the MindSElS research project, with studies centred around the supply and use of medications: prescribing, dispensing, administration – mindful use of technology can contribute to making the activities safer. However this website is dedicated to researching mindfulness and technology more generally, across contexts or discipinary fields, without boundaries.
The MindSElS study is underpinned by the Langerian theory of mindfulness – defined as conscious awareness of context and content of information, or the drawing of novel distinctions, as part of activities guided, but not governed, by routines [1]. Applied to teams and organisations, collective mindfulness explains organisational resilience, reliability and safety: collective mindfulness is awareness of risks and constant preoccupation with ‘the unexpected’, at all levels of the organisation. Mindful organising aims to enhance people awareness of interdependency of actions and capacity for interpretations beyond familiar categories, enabling the organisation to achieve resilience by anticipating and containing safety incidents [2].
[1] Langer E. Mindfulness: Addison-Wesley, 1989
[2] Sutcliffe KM, Weick KE. Mindful Organising and Resilient Healthcare. In: Hollnagel E, Braithwaite J, Wears R, eds. Resilient Health Care. London: Ashgate, 2013:145-56
Resilience, Mindfulness and Medication Safety with Electronic Systems (MindSElS) is a EU Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Individual Fellowship awarded to Valentina to explore the impact of electronic medicines management systems on individual and collective mindfulness in hospital settings. It includes studies across five countries in Europe and Australia. It is a collaboration between the Centre for Medication Safety and Service Quality, UCL School of Pharmacy and the Centre for Health Systems and Safety Research, Australian Institute of Health Innovation at Macquarie University. Studies in Europe will be carried out in collaboration with le Centre d’Investigation Clinique-Innovation Technologique (CIC-IT) de Lille, the Research Group for Information Systems of the University of Oslo (UiO, Norway), and the Centre for Management of Clinical Risk and Patient Safety (GRC Centre) (Regione Toscana, Italy).
(collective) mindfulness and technology in healthcare 