1st Edition

The Invisible Work of Nurses Hospitals, Organisation and Healthcare

By Davina Allen Copyright 2015
170 Pages
by Routledge

170 Pages
by Routledge

170 Pages
by Routledge

Nursing is typically understood, and understands itself, as a care-giving occupation. It is through its relationships with patients – whether these are absent, present, good, bad or indifferent – that modern day nursing is defined. Yet nursing work extends far beyond direct patient care activities. Across the spectrum of locales in which they are employed, nurses, in numerous ways, support and... Read more

Preface  Chapter 1. A Figure-Ground Reversal  Chapter 2. Creating Working Knowledge  Chapter 3.Articulating Trajectories of Care  Chapter 4. Match-Making  Chapter 5. Passing the Baton, Parsing the Patient  Chapter 6. Rethinking Hospital Organisation, Rethinking Nursing

Biography

Davina Allen is Professor of Health Service Delivery at Cardiff University, UK. She is Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Sociology of Health and Illness.

'The book is readable for all healthcare professionals and it might be useful for non exec directors as well to enable them to understand the complexities of nursing. Nursing staff should read this book as well to highlight the hidden components of the role, although nursing does glue healthcare together, I think we should be able to articulate what it is that we do...The real life examples and quotes from nurses working in practice, this brought the book to life.'- Kerry Bloodworth, assistant director of nursing, Nottingham University Hospitals, Nursing Times

'In summary, this is an important book by an important sociologist of health care. Although it is a monograph, I could see myself building undergraduate lectures around some of its core concepts and using it as an exemplar in Masters’ level methods teaching. But the big contribution of this book is likely to be in the way that its core concepts can subsequently be developed and exploited as a generalisable apparatus for analysing some of the complexities of organisational work in late modernity.' - Carl May, University of Southampton, Sociology of Health and Illness