ABSTRACT
I began this book with the juxtaposition of two quotations that reflected the tension between professional and management versions of nursing, and I have examined the ways in which, at a particular point in time and in a particular context, these discourses interacted to fashion the shape of nursing work in daily practice. Throughout this text I have employed a non-essentialist conceptualization of nursing work. I have argued that nursing jurisdiction is done, and that the boundaries of nursing work are produced through the locally situated actions and interactions in which nurses engage in the course of their daily practice. What is also clear, however, is that nursing jurisdiction is not accomplished in circumstances of nurses’ own choosing. The nurse manager’s words that open this concluding chapter are a powerful – albeit controversial – expression of the constraints experienced by staff in the course of their everyday work.
