Davina Allen

Patricia Lyne

Focusing on the nurse researcher's dual role as practitioner and researcher, as well as research ethics and the relationship between practitioner and academic agendas, The Reality of Nursing Research helps to: locate the practical dilemmas of nursing research in historical and policy context prepare those about to embark on research for some of the issues they will face reassure researchers that they are not the only ones to encounter the complexity of real life research support the research teacher or supervisor in preparing and mentoring their students share experiences of others who have encountered similar issues and provide some practical advice on their solution. With illustrative case studies and practical advice, this book looks at the real life dilemmas faced by nurse researchers at key stages of the research process from developing a research question through to disseminating the findings. It is an essential text for nurse researchers, teachers of research, research supervisors and nurses undertaking research at diploma through to doctoral level.

Politics, Practices and Processes

The Reality of Nursing Research

Jeffrey Braithwaite

Justin Waring

Jane Sandall

The Sociology of Healthcare Safety and Quality presents a series of research-informed readings on the sociological contributions of technologies, practices, experiences, and organizational quality and safety across a range of healthcare contexts. Represents the first collection of peer-reviewed research articles showcasing ways that sociology can contribute to the ongoing policy concern of healthcare safety and quality Features original contributions from leading experts in healthcare related fields from three continents Reveals the state-of-the art in sociological analyses of contemporary healthcare safety and quality along with future directions in the field Offers sociological insights from the perspectives of managers, clinicians, and patients

The Sociology of Healthcare Safety and Quality

Bringing together sociological theories and nursing practice this text develops a dynamic conceptualisation of the nursing role which is rooted in the work setting. It looks at the factors which have shaped nursing work in the past and those which are likely to shape it in the future. Nurses' work is changing in two respects: the place nursing occupies in the health care division of labour and the routine shifting of work boundaries that nurses experience in their daily work. Drawing on her detailed observations of the reality of nursing work in a district general hospital, Davina Allen explores these linked themes, focussing on five key work boundaries: *nurse:doctor *nurse:manager *nurse:support worker *nurse:patient *nurse:nurse The text provides new insight into many of the tensions and dilemmas nurses routinely face and the processes and constraints through which their work is fashioned. It offers a new way of thinking about the nursing role which is particularly relevant at a time when the scope of nursing practice is expanding and when the integrated approach to health and social care is seen as the key to provision and improved services.

The Role of Nurses in the Hospital Division of Labour

The Changing Shape of Nursing Practice

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 sustain the delivery and organisation of health services. In recent history, however, this wider work has generally been regarded as at best an adjunct to the core nursing function, and at worse responsible for taking nurses away from their ‘real work’ with patients. Beyond its identity as the ‘other’ to care-giving, little is known about this element of nursing practice. Drawing on extensive observational research of the everyday work in a UK hospital, and insights from practice-based approaches and actor network theory, the aim of this book is to lay the empirical and theoretical foundations for a reappraisal of the nursing contribution to society by shining a light on this invisible aspect of nurses’ work. Nurses, it is argued, can be understood as focal actors in health systems and through myriad processes of ‘translational mobilisation’ sustain the networks through which care is organised. Not only is this work an essential driver of action, it also operates as a powerful countervailing force to the centrifugal tendencies inherent in healthcare organisations which, for all their gloss of order and rationality, are in reality very loose arrangements. The Invisible Work of Nurses will be interest to academics and students across a number of fields, including nursing, medical sociology, organisational studies, health management, science and technology studies, and improvement science.

Hospitals, Organisation and Healthcare

The Invisible Work of Nurses

David Hughes

This volume examines the division of labour between nurses and other health professions and occupations. It connects classic sociological concerns with practical problems affecting the contemporary NHS, such as: skill mix in hospitals, the emergence of new roles, the shifting boundaries between medicine and nursing, and the barriers to change that exist. The book contains a series of case studies illustrating tensions, conflict and accommodation observable when occupations, or sub-groups within occupations, negotiate new working relationships.

Davina Allen

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