Virtual Care – negotiating ethics and professionalism

Abstract

In recent years, welfare technology have been introduced in the health and social sector, aiming at rationalization and retrenchment in a way that involves a withdrawal of professional care and envisions empowerment of the clients. In this article, we explore how introducing screen visits in home care implies the introduction of new values in care and supports new forms of professionalism. Theoretically, we take departure in the empirical ethics perspective thus focusing on how ethics as normative perspectives are developed and negotiated in a practice. The article is based on a one-year intensive fi eld study of the use of screen visits in home care in a Danish municipality. We show how new norms of effective, withdrawn care are appropriated and legitimized as good care, and illuminate how employee-driven innovation in relation to the use of screen visits may potentially serve as renewal of professionalism. Eventually we point out how the boundaries of using technology are constantly challenged, and how ethical work unfolds, in particular around questions of physical and virtual proximity. We conclude by discussing the movement towards new professionalism as paradoxical and confl ictual, and point out how ethical work comprising both emotional and identity-related aspects play an important role.