Nurses and Doctors at Work: Rethinking Professional Boundaries Book

"The author is a sensitive observer who includes some very powerful and moving portrayals of the everyday world of hospital nursing." - Professor Celia Davies, School of Health & Social Welfare, The Open University. "I would recommend this book to undergraduate students on nursing programmes, medical sociology, and the sociology of work." - Professor Anne Williams, Department of Nursing, Midwifery and Health Care, University of Wales, Swansea. In "Nurses and Doctors at Work", Deidre Wicks looks at nurses' work, and how they relate with doctors throughout their work. She views the world of nursing through the eyes of nurses themselves. Drawing on extended observation and one-to-one interviews, she explores many aspects of nursing work which are normally hidden and rarely discussed in nursing texts. Her exploration includes incidents which reveal both co-operation and contestation with doctors and their medical goals and priorities. Wicks constructs a complex and nuanced picture of nurse-doctor relations which moves well beyond the usual Marxist-style analyses. She uncovers the tension between structure and agency in nursing work, and explores the ways in which nurses demonstrate their capacity as knowledgeable actors within the constraints of gendered, institutional structures. She also shows how nurses' discourses of healing dating from pre-Nightingale days have survived into the present, even when they are in opposition to conventional medical practice. Wicks argues that nurses are constantly involved in both undermining and constructing the sexual division of labour with doctors. "Nurses and Doctors at Work" is a major contribution to the literature on the sociology of nursing and the sexual division of labour.Read More