Nursing

“Accordingly, nurses saw electronic fetal monitoring as proving the value of the tacit knowledge and difficult-to-express processes they used to appraise patients. In addition electronic fetal monitoring not only moved obstetric nurses closer to obstetricians; it also moved obstetric nursing, especially nursing in labor and delivery, up the hierarchy of nursing specialties. . . Electronic fetal monitoring tied obstetric nursing more closely to the prestige and drama of critical care nursing, represented iconically by the cardiac monitor. Electronic fetal monitoring moved the labor and delivery nurses closer to the critical care nurse, who had achieved an elite status among nurses” (Sandelowski, 156).