Making Fast-Track Surgery Transportable: Sino-Danish Travel Work. Issue 3 (3rd July 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Andersen, Signe Lindgård
• Is Part Of: East Asian science, technology and society. Volume 15:Issue 3(2021)
• Page Start: 333
• Page End: 353
• Publication Date: 2021-07-03
• Subjects: Infrastructures -- health solutions -- comparison -- training -- travel work; Science -- East Asia -- Periodicals; Technology -- East Asia -- Periodicals; Science; Technology; East Asia; Periodicals; 306.46095
• DOI: 10.1080/18752160.2021.1927347
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1875-2160

Abstract

Abstract: This article examines the concrete travel work that enables the global transport of Fast-Track Surgery (FTS), a set of evidence-based, standardized protocols and guidelines for perioperative recovery. Having ethnographically followed FTS training for medical staff from provincial hospitals in China's Gansu province at a local hospital in Denmark, I show how FTS is made transportable through interactions between Chinese and Danish healthcare professionals in a series of workshops, meetings and educational activities. I argue that the transportability of a health-promoting infrastructure like FTS is neither a matter of technology transfer nor of evidence as such. Rather, it requires a specific kind of travel work in the form of traveling comparisons as a constant two-way dynamic between hospital settings in Denmark and China.