ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the changes taking place in British nursing today and assesses the extent to which these might be seen as challenging the traditional power of medicine. Overall, I advocate a cautious stance to the challenge that nursing poses to medicine, a stance informed by an awareness of a long and chequered history of attempts by nurses to establish a distinct and autonomous sphere of competence within the health division of labour. I suggest, first, that some of the current reforms in nursing have been on the agenda for a century or more so we must contextualise these historically; second, that the constraints placed on nurses’ aspirations by the medical profession have been and continue to be overstated; third, that constraints emanating from the broader environment of state-directed health policy and the hospital system of medical care have been and continue to be crucial in determining the extent to which nurses’ own demands are realised; and finally, that the problem for nursing has been and continues to be the problem of gender.
