ABSTRACT
In this chapter I examine the ways in which the boundary between nurses and doctors was being produced at Woodlands. As outlined in Chapter 1, developments in nursing and medical education and the health service reforms had created significant jurisdictional ambiguity for nursing and medical staff. On the one hand, management discourse emphasized the need for nurses to undertake doctor-devolved work in order to improve the hours and working conditions of junior doctors and contribute to the achievement of organizational efficiencies. On the other hand, nursing’s professional discourse underlined the occupation’s difference from medicine and, in attempting to reintegrate caring activities into the core professional nursing role, it was challenging the traditional status hierarchy that elevated ‘technical’ over caring work in the provision of health services. Both versions of nursing found their proponents within the occupation, and, adding yet another layer of complexity, those who supported the devolution of ‘doctors’’ work to nurses often employed the rhetoric of ‘profession’ in legitimating their position.
