Ageing Healthcare Workers and ICT: Making healthcare workplaces healthy for 50+.

The project aims to explore the implications for ageing healthcare personnel of the reshaping of healthcare sector workplaces via the use of new technologies. The explorations will be grounded - both theoretically and empirically - in research on contempo rary changes to work and organisation emergent from the widespread introduction and rapid diffusion of new information and communication technologies (ICT). We ask how and to what extent mechanisms for inclusion and/or exclusion of ageing healthcare perso nnel are produced in the process of restructuring healthcare work. The focus is on how new ICT systems make differences in everyday practice of nurses and doctors in general, and how management, labour unions, and the individual ageing workers act, or do not act, in order to prevent exclusion of older healthcare personnel. Our research design, with both quantitative and qualitative methods, ensures that our findings will contribute to a more holistic understanding of, and strengthened knowledge about incl usion and exclusion mechanisms among ageing healthcare workers, and to the development of the healthcare sector as a healthy, inclusive workplace for all. The quantitative part of the study is a survey providing a general overview of the relationship betw een ICT as a new tool and ageing healthcare personnel. The qualitative part of the study is employed to enable us to address the research questions in depth. The methods will include documentary analysis, observation, informal discussions/walking and talk ing, semi-structured interviews, focus groups and visuals. The results will be fed directly back to the empirical field, the case hospitals, through a number of workshops, and indirectly to the fields of healthcare research and policy through national and international publishing, and the production of a documentary film. The project will particularly be an asset for the policy for inclusive working life.