The relationship between nursing and medical cultures: implications for the design and implementation of a clinicians' workstation.

The culture of different professions is manifest in how members relate to each other and in how they organize and store data and information. For developers of clinical workstations intended to support not only the independent tasks but also the interdependent tasks of multiple health professionals, recognition of cultural differences among groups of health care professionals may be of great importance. Allowance for and adaptation to these differences are likely to be important for both acceptance and effective use of clinical workstations. Examples are drawn from Nursing and Medicine based on a clinician's workstation currently in use and undergoing continuous development.