Professional ideology and the practice of work: Nurses' caring work in a surgical intensive care unit.
Item
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Title
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Professional ideology and the practice of work: Nurses' caring work in a surgical intensive care unit.
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Identifier
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AAI3063861
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identifier
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3063861
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Creator
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Merkel, Cindy Kay.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Cynthia Fuchs Epstein
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Date
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2002
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Sociology, General | Health Sciences, Nursing
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Abstract
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For the past two decades the nursing profession has embarked on a professionalizing project that claims caring is the essence of nursing. Nursing's scholarly discourse has generally described caring in terms of nurses' interpersonal relationships with patients and their family members. Using ethnographic methods, this research investigated the relevancy and meaning of this ideological stance to nurses' actual "caring work." Following Arlie Hochschild's concept of "emotional labor," caring work was defined as efforts by nurses to assist a patient or family member with emotional suffering. Day shift nurses in the surgical intensive care unit of an urban hospital were studied. The cultural, social structural and situational contexts of the nurses' caring are described. The research revealed that an ideology of care was of limited use to the nurses. Caring accounted for only a small part of the nurses' daily work and neglected their wide range of technical competence. Care as ideology also demeaned the nurses' status as professionals because they regarded their caring work as unskilled labor that had little value in the surgical intensive care unit or to society.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
