Nursing: a ghettoized profession relegated to women's sphere

Valentine, Patricia E.B.

doi:10.1016/0020-7489(95)00037-2

Cited by 16 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…A nasty conflict played out between an LPN and a nursing assistant, for instance, may have at its root not simply a ‘personality conflict’ or someone’s poor work performance, but ultimately the medical monopolization of health‐care and the related struggle of nursing to win professional status. On the level of the nursing home, relationships between nurses and NAs have come to mirror doctor–nurse authority structures, typified by inequality and lack of collegiality (Foner 1994; Valentine 1996). In both cases, the superior party passes off ‘inferior’ tasks to his or her subordinate — in effect, also casting off the less desirable and ‘professional’ aspects of his or her occupational self.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The tensions between nurses and NAs in the nursing home setting can be interpreted as a modern‐day manifestation of nursing’s ongoing struggle for power and professional prestige. At Manchester, this struggle played itself out in such a manner that ‘caring’, argued by many to be nursing’s definitive value (Leininger 1984; Watson 1985; Reverby 1987; Barbee 1993; Valentine 1996), was directed only to residents — not to coworkers. Embroiled in their own troubles, few nursing department staff made an effort to understand the struggles of others.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hospital nursing schools, the predominant form of nursing education up until the early 1970s, were total institutions where students learned ‘the elaborate rules of hospital hierarchy’, including deference to superiors (Melosh 1982, 50–1). Part of this, surely, reflects nursing’s subordination to medicine, itself a hierarchical discipline that succeeded in relegating nurses to the role of nurturing assistants to physicians (Ehrenreich and English 1973; Carpenter 1993; Valentine 1996).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Working in and around the ‘chain of command’: power relations among nursing staff in an urban nursing home

Jervis

2002

Nursing Inquiry

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By most accounts, the discipline of nursing enjoys considerable hegemony in US nursing homes. Not surprisingly, the ethos of this setting is influenced, in large part, by nursing's value system. This ethos powerfully impacts both the residents who live in nursing homes and the staff who work there. Using ethnographic methods, this project explored power relations among nursing assistants and nurses in an urban nursing home in the United States. Factors contributing to tensions among nursing staff were the stigma attached to nursing homes and those who work in them, as well as the long history of class conflict and power struggles within the discipline of nursing. The latter struggles, in turn, reflected nursing's quest for professional status in the face of medicine's hegemony over health-care. Ultimately, these factors coalesced to produce a local work environment characterized by conflict--and by aides' resistance to nurses' domination.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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Working in and around the ‘chain of command’: power relations among nursing staff in an urban nursing home

Jervis

2002

Nursing Inquiry

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“…However, roles can have parallels with broader social structures and processes too. Valentine (1996) draws parallels between gender inequality in society at large and the difficulties that nurses, in a traditionally feminized profession, have had in acquiring status for their professional identity.…”

Section: What This Paper Addsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sacrificing the personal to the professional: community mental health nurses

Majomi

Brown

Crawford

2003

Journal of Advanced Nursing

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Background. The study of stress in mental health nurses has almost always focused on factors intrinsic to their job roles and has neglected the interaction between work and home roles, which may also be a source of stress. Moreover, role theory has not provided an adequate account of either personal or occupational change, especially when this results from the experience of stress. Methods. Twenty community mental health nurses agreed to participate in semi-structured interviews about the stresses they experienced at work and at home. A grounded theory analysis disclosed the centrality of conflicts between work and home roles in participants' accounts and this provided the focus for subsequent detailed readings of the interview transcripts.Findings. Participants described how difficult and often demanding family situations were integrated with professional careers in a climate of rapid organizational change in the health service. As well as being an ongoing source of strain, these competing role demands were often described as leading to sudden changes for individual workers, such as periods of illness or re-evaluation of their work role. To assist in making sense of this process, the term 'punctuated equilibria' was adopted to illuminate the build-up of tension between work and domestic lives, which was described by some workers as leading to a sudden reformulation of their relationship to their work roles and employing organizations. Conclusions and limitations.The study was small-scale and relied on retrospective self-reports. Nevertheless, it emphasized the importance of considering all the roles that individuals play and highlights the possibility that, even when staff are apparently coping with their roles at work and home, difficulties may be building up which could lead to a sudden period of absenteeism or disillusionment.

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“…Nurses and nursing practice have been, and continue to be, influenced by the social, economic and political climate within which they are located. Although nurses have been active in feminist groups lobbying for improved conditions to better meet the health needs of women, nursing authorshave continued to suggest that feminism and nursing havean uneasy alliance (Vance et al ., 1985; Bunting & Campbell, 1990; Mulligan, 1992; Chinn, 1995; Valentine, 1996; Kane & Thomas, 2000). Despite the commitment of individual nurses to the feminist cause, the effects of feminism(s) on clinical practice are not clear.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural conflict: the impact of western feminism(s) on nurses caring for women of non‐English speaking background

Blackford

Street

2002

Journal of Clinical Nursing

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Summary • Much research has been conducted for understanding the health needs of people of different cultural backgrounds and the problems they experience in seeking health care. In Australia, despite such research, it is argued that there remains an exclusionary health care culture that continues to affect equity and access for people of non‐English speaking background. There was a need for research in which health professionals examined their own Anglo‐Australian culture and its impact on other ethnic communities. • Such concerns provided the impetus for a feminist praxis study to engage nurses in understanding and improving care for migrant women. This study was conducted with 26 nurses in a paediatric hospital in Melbourne, Australia. Five collaborative research groups were formed, each consisting of four to six nurses who were co‐researchers. Together, the nurses and researchers explored the health care experiences of migrant women, using a variety of quantitative and qualitative data collection strategies. • This paper explores a major finding of the study, which was the impact of liberal feminist approaches on the practices of Australian nurses who cared for women of different ethnicity and race. • The study found that the efforts of liberal feminist nurses to ‘treat all people the same’ meant that women from different cultural backgrounds did not always receive equity in care. Through the feminist praxis process the nurses were able to explore contradictions in their practice and focus on equity in care to meet the specific gendered and racially constructed needs of women of different cultural backgrounds. • A number of strategies were adopted that included regular use of female health interpreters and provision of privacy for migrant women when caring for their children.

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Nursing: a ghettoized profession relegated to women's sphere

Cited by 16 publications

References 28 publications

Working in and around the ‘chain of command’: power relations among nursing staff in an urban nursing home

Working in and around the ‘chain of command’: power relations among nursing staff in an urban nursing home

Sacrificing the personal to the professional: community mental health nurses

Cultural conflict: the impact of western feminism(s) on nurses caring for women of non‐English speaking background

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