ABSTRACT
This chapter searches for the “sweet spot” of disclosing neither too much nor too little (Pruit, Pruit, & Rambo, in press) in order to convey the unique experiences of being non-clinician educators in a healthcare system. An organizational autoethnography about a healthcare system begins with the assertion that such a system is as much a concept as it is a physical place situated in space and time. The healthcare system includes macro processes such as economics, politics, law, and education, processes that operate far afield from the buildings that comprise what we recognize as institutions of healthcare. The chapter examines how individuals in a healthcare system interact, collaborate, catalyze, challenge, compete with or debate each other. These interactions demonstrate how rules and resources–and the meanings we attach to them–are produced, maintained, repaired and transformed. Extraordinary levels of complexity and risk put hospitals and health networks into the category of high-reliability organizations such as air travel, nuclear power and emergency services.
