Johnson, Ericka | Sweden

Researcher at the Department of Technology and Social Change at Linköping University, Sweden

Degrees:
2004 Ph.D. (Technology and Social Change) Linköping University, Sweden
1999 M.Phil. (Development Studies), Oxford University, Oxford, UK
1995 B.A. (Comparative Religion, Russian), Vassar College, NY, USA

My research looks at the practices, ideas and understandings of the medical body as reproduced in the construction and introduction of simulators. I am currently working with an interdisciplinary team of colleagues from Linköping University Hospital’s and the Department of Gender studies on the development and use of a female pelvic simulator.

In my dissertation I examined how computer simulators are used in medical education. The study focused on the details of practice when people and machines interact and intra-act, and how the use of simulators contributes to both learning and identity formation. I worked with the issues of gender and Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in my master’s thesis and continue to teach and write in this field.

At the Department of Technology and Social Change, I am part of a group of researchers called ‘The Technology and Medical Practice Group.’ Composed of doctoral students and senior researchers, we meet regularly to discuss social science research about the medical field.  

Project at IAS-STS: Simulating medical practices: Analysing the construction and use of a gynaecological simulator

The project I will be working on in Graz is an examination of how the e-pelvis simulator, which represents the female pelvic anatomy and is used for teaching gynaecological exams to medical students, has been designed and developed. I follow the e-pelvis’ path from conception in an academic university hospital in the USA to commercial prototype form at a UK-based firm and eventually to production and marketing through a company in the USA. The project looks at how the different types of understandings which exist about the simulators development (teaching tool, research object, marketable object, profit making product, etc.) integrate with each other over time. In the research, I am particularly interested in how the simulator came to look the way it does, what practical considerations were made during its construction and production that influenced its final form, and the design path the simulator followed. How the female patient body is understood and represented by the various actors and the way these understanding evolve into the physical artefact will be addressed. A subsection of the study also examines how the simulator is being used in two different gynaecological education courses.

Of particular interest with this simulator is the fact that it has been designed by a female doctor and the prototype of the physical model was developed by a female medical illustrator. I look at the role these women had in the development of the final product as well as their experiences of working with product development in a field that is traditionally dominated by male computer designers and engineers.

During my time at Graz, I plan to incorporates the analysis of the gynaecological simulator’s development with my earlier work on the other medical simulators. This work will be a theoretical analysis of the understandings of the human body which are being built into the design and construction of medical simulators.