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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the literature regarding work intensification that is being experienced by nurses, to examine the effects this is having on their capacity to complete care. The authors contend that nurses’ inability to provide all the care patients require, has negative implications on their professional responsibility. Design/methodology/approach The authors used institutional ethnography to review the discourse in the literature. This approach supports inquiry through the review of text in order to uncover activities that remain institutionally accepted but unquestioned and hidden. Findings What the authors found was that the quality and risk management forms an important part of lean thinking, with the organisational culture influencing outcomes; however, the professional cost to nurses has not been fully explored. Research limitations/implications The text uncovered inconsistency between what organisations accepted as successful cost savings, and what nurses were experiencing in their attempts to achieve the care in the face of reduced time and human resources. Nurses’ attempts at completing care were done at the risk of their own professional accountability. Practical implications Nurses are working in lean and stressful environments and are struggling to complete care within reduced resource allocations. This leads to care rationing, which negatively impacts on nurses’ professional practice, and quality of care provision. Originality/value This approach is a departure from the standard qualitative review because the focus is on the textual relationships between what is being advocated by organisations directing cost reduction and what is actioned by the nurses working at the coalface. The discordant standpoints between these two juxtapositions are identified.

Aims To investigate how nursing experts and experts from other health professions understand the concept of rationing/missed/unfinished nursing care and how this is compared at a cross‐cultural level. Design The mixed methods descriptive study. Methods The semi‐structured questionnaires were sent to the sample of 45 scholars and practitioners from 26 countries. Data were collected from November 2017–February 2018. Results Assigning average cultural values to participants from each country revealed three cultural groups: high individualism‐high masculinity, high individualism‐low masculinity and low individualism‐medium masculinity. Content analysis of the findings revealed three main themes, which were identified across cultural clusters: (a) projecting blame for the phenomenon: Blaming the nurse versus blaming the system; (b) intentionality versus unintentionality; and (c) focus on nurses in comparison to focus on patients. Conclusion Consistent differences in the understanding of missed nursing care can be understood in line with the nation's standing on two main cultural values: individualism and masculinity. Impact The findings call for scholars' caution in interpreting missed nursing care from different cultures, or in comparing levels and types of missed nursing tasks across nations. The findings further indicated that mimicking interventions to limit missed nursing care from one cultural context to the other might be ineffective. Interventions to mitigate the phenomenon should be implemented thoughtfully, considering the cultural aspects.

Distribution électronique Cairn.info pour ARIMHE. © ARIMHE. Tous droits réservés pour tous pays.La reproduction ou représentation de cet article, notamment par photocopie, n'est autorisée que dans les limites des conditions générales d'utilisation du site ou, le cas échéant, des conditions générales de la licence souscrite par votre établissement. Toute autre reproduction ou représentation, en tout ou partie, sous quelque forme et de quelque manière que ce soit, est interdite sauf accord préalable et écrit de l'éditeur, en dehors des cas prévus par la législation en vigueur en France. Il est précisé que son stockage dans une base de données est également interdit.