CARING, CURING, AND COORDINATING IN HOSPITAL NURSING: THREE DECADES OF TECHNICAL CHANGE.
Contributors: Loyola University of Chicago.
Published: 1988
Number of pages: 246
Subjects: Sociology, General.; Sociology, Theory and Methods.; Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: This study compares and analyzes nursing tasks in hospital inpatient settings, tracing the technical changes in work over a thirty year period. The first time period, the 1950s, was an era of low specialization in medicine along with little differentiation of hospital work. It is compared with the second era, the 1980s, when medicine had become highly specialized and hospital work had undergone a higher degree of differentiation.

Work technology here is the independent variable, and the organizational structure of nursing, conducted on an inpatient unit level, is the dependent variable. Structure is meant to include the ways in which nurses assign and complete their work.

The comparison of 1950s' and 1980s' nurses' work indicates that differences in actual amounts of time nurses spend at the bedside are minimal; yet the composition or nature of such tasks today is markedly different.

The "curing" function of nursing (i.e., assessment, medications, treatments, and procedures) is very evident in 1980s nursing. The traditional "caring" function of nursing (e.g., feeding and bathing patients) still remains visible but today represents a smaller part of nursing's bedside work.

The most dramatic change in nurses' work surfaced in the category of indirect work--work done in support of bedside activities. The percent of a nurse's indirect work time spent on patient-centered tasks (i.e., paperwork and communication) shot up from 19% in 1952 to 45% in 1983.

Change in nursing technology has also led to organizational structural change. This study concludes that these changes have been caused by a need for nurses to assume the role of "integrator" or coordinator whereby the modern nurse distinctively coordinates the many health professionals and technicians practicing at the patient's bedside. The study should assist the modern medical establishment to clarify, and perhaps "institutionalize", this implicit and unique--but insufficiently recognized--nurse role.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-02, Section: A, page: 0346.

Thesis (PH.D.)--LOYOLA UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, 1988.

School code: 0112.