Enacting different stories

What does telemonitoring become in chronic ill persons lives?

Abstract

We scrutinize how people living with diabetes type 2 and co-morbidities enact stories as part of attending telemonitoring services. Although telemonitoring has been attached to a host of promises and diagnoses, we argue, it is pivotal to understand the stories and engagements that care receivers enact about it. This perspective is missing in the literature. We frame our analysis with the notions of ‘modes of ordering’ and ‘justification’ to analyze ethnographic interviews, logbooks, and presentations and discussion at a workshop. We conducted sixteen interviews with persons living with diabetes type 2 to scrutiny how they order their lives while, increasingly, care devices enter their private homes. Our analysis leads to four modes of ordering and their justification: (1) telecare as a ritual to gain reassurance, (2) telecare to receive support from nurses, (3) telecare to deal with flexibility and control, and (4) telecare as a signifier of failure to stick to the diabetes regime. The study untangles the contexts of what people aim to achieve, the struggle they undergo, and the transformation of their aims. To get a better understanding of care receivers’ engagement, we propose positioning people involved in type 2 diabetes telemonitoring as subjects in need of support to manage their health condition. The research design committed the participants to reflect over self-tracking at home over a period. Also, it gave them an opportunity to demonstrate how they self-track by making a presentation of their everyday self-tracking practice at the workshop. Telemonitoring becomes different things in peoples’ lives, and the justifications for participating differ and transform along with the engagement. We conclude that stories about self-tracking is enacted in various ways depending on contexts such as co-morbidity, the support they get and their position at the labor market.