Book Description: As the service sector grows in importance, health work has become more typical of contemporary forms of employment than the industrial models conventionally studied. While most sociology of work has been based on research into men's work, women now form nearly half the workforce and the analysis of the work done by women and as well as by men is of crucial importance. The National Health Service 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 reorganised 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 the health service on professional boundaries and inter-professional relations, exploring the paradox of the ostensible drive to decentralise responsibility introduced alongside the increased management of professionals.
They discuss the tensions between the simultaneous application of Fordist and post-Fordist modes of governance and describe an increasingly fragmented service, in which inflexible working patterns are generated by demand for the optimal use of labour, but where there remain examples of effective collaborative working. With its theoretical focus on the debate surrounding employment change, Medicine and Nursing will be essential reading for academics and students in the sociology of work, the sociology of the professions, public sector management, health studies, nursing studies, medical sociology and women's studies.