Medicine and Nursing Professions in a Changing Health Service [Paperback]

The NHS is the largest employer in Western Europe. It embraces two of the oldest professions - doctors and nurses - whose work practices are still highly traditional and yet currently at the forefront of radical change as health work is being reorganized to reflect the new political priorities of the 1990s. This book focuses on the collaborative work of doctors and nurses in one particular area: the acute hospital ward, looking at the effects of `new wave' management on formerly independent, autonomous teams. The authors examine the impact of changes in health service on professional boundaries and inter-professional relations, exploring the paradox of the ostensible drive to decentralise responsibility introduced alongside the increased maThe NHS is the largest employer in Western Europe. It embraces two of the oldest professions - doctors and nurses - whose work practices are still highly traditional and yet currently at the forefront of radical change as health work is being reorganized to reflect the new political priorities of the 1990s. This book focuses on the collaborative work of doctors and nurses in one particular area: the acute hospital ward, looking at the effects of `new wave' management on formerly independent, autonomous teams. The authors examine the impact of changes in health service on professional boundaries and inter-professional relations, exploring the paradox of the ostensible drive to decentralise responsibility introduced alongside the increased ma`this remarkable book examines the practical and theoretical issues concerning the relationship between doctors and nurses in a changing health sercive. The empirical base of this study is the UK National Health Service; however, its problems have a wider international scope, which are typical in other countries where health services are likewise in the process of transformation.... This book will be particularly useful to those nurses who have an interest in the transformation of contemporary hló<