Abstract
This chapter describes some of the ways that demand for energy is made in hospitals. It develops an account of energy demand as the outcome of the organisation of connected working practices that constitute the regular provision of healthcare. Drawing on interview data taken from an ethnographic study of institutional rhythms and the organisation of working practices in hospitals, it describes how changes in the material arrangements, professional boundaries and temporalities that underpin hospital life affect the fixity and flexibility of connections between practices in ways that matter for the potential for large institutions to achieve demand side response and to foster the design of new and less resource-intensive ways of working.
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Notes
- 1.
Acute care is a level of health care in which a patient is treated for a brief but severe episode of illness, for conditions that are the result of disease or trauma, and during recovery from surgery.
- 2.
According to the NHS Sustainable Development Unit (2013) Carbon Footprint Update for NHS in England, buildings’ energy use makes up approximately 17 % of NHS carbon emissions , while transport makes up another 13 % and procurement another 61 %.
- 3.
Peaks can, of course, be problematic in their own right, as I write above.
- 4.
In that article we referred to these as jurisdictional and material-spatial connections.
- 5.
Pseudonyms and generalised job titles are used throughout to preserve the anonymity of participants.
- 6.
A typical or planned journey through the healthcare system, from first contact to completion of treatment.
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Blue, S. (2018). Reducing Demand for Energy in Hospitals: Opportunities for and Limits to Temporal Coordination. In: Hui, A., Day, R., Walker, G. (eds) Demanding Energy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61991-0_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61991-0_14
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