ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the themes of power and conflict between doctors and nurses in decision making in intensive care. In this study, medical and nursing staff described themselves as working as part of cohesive clinical team, and this indeed was demonstrated the majority of the time. However, in the decisionmaking process, nursing perceived medicine to be domineering, and medicine perceived nursing to be weak, wanting a voice, but unprepared to take the concomitant responsibility. The power of each discipline and the conflict between them were made manifest through the knowledge used for, and the roles used in, decision making.The way in which this happened is explored together with the strategies used by both medicine and nursing to manage the resultant conflict.
