Digital Work, Workers and Learning

Context: The increased use of digital technologies in contemporary work often brings about two kinds of changes. The first is how work activities are undertaken, through the kinds of information, procedures and practices associated with the occupations and their use within the circumstances of their practice (i.e. work settings). The second is how these technologies have shaped interactions with other workers, and the provision of the goods and services being provided through performing that work (e.g. patients, next of kin). Consequently, competence in digital technologies is central to performing much contemporary work (Billett, 2021), and healthcare is no exception. Indeed, given concerns about patient safety and care, health and social care workers’ digital competence becomes increasingly necessary for that work. Approach: Observations of practice within healthcare settings reveal the importance of that competence (Ajjawi et al., 2020; Noble et al., 2019). Whether doctors and nurses’ engaging with workstations on wheels at patients’ bedside or utilizing those technologies to engage remotely with patients, it indicates not only the diversity of their use, but the distinctiveness of their use in a country like Australia with its vast distances and widely distributed population. Yet, to understand more about patterns of usage, this presentation goes beyond qualitative observational and interview data to analyze the recently released Program of International Assessment of Adult Competence (PIAAC) Second Cycle by drawing on healthcare workers’ data. Findings: The purpose here is to describe and generate patterns of responses across healthcare work requirements, on the one hand, and measure engagement and use of those technologies. In this way, the PIAAC data are complemented and vice versa by observational and specific interviews with healthcare workers, how they come to engage with those tasks, and the kinds of competencies they report possessing. It was found that these workers frequently engage in both routine and non-routine problem-solving, exercised high levels of discretion both of which are associated with and, learning which was also explicitly stated and demonstrated high levels of competence with digital technologies in and through their work. Conclusions: these quantitative data support the instances of practice observed in the qualitative studies, thereby providing indications of how these workers are engaging with technologies and not only, potentially, enhancing patient safety and care, but also as vehicles through which they are able to learn and develop further their clinical practice both intra and inter-professionally.