The Complexities of Care: Nursing Reconsidered (The Culture and Politics of Health Care Work) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801445051 ISBN 13: 9780801445057

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2000

Synopsis

"Nursing, everyone believes, is the caring profession. Texts on caring line the walls of nursing schools and student shelves. Indeed, the discipline of nursing is often known as the 'caring science.' Because of their caring reputation, nurses top the polls as the most-trustworthy professionals. Yet, in spite of what seems to be an endless outpouring of public support, in almost every country in the world nursing is under threat, in the practice setting and in the academic sector. Indeed, its standing as a regulated profession is constantly challenged. In our view, this paradox is neither accidental nor natural but, in great part, the logical consequence of the fact that nurses and their organizations place such a heavy emphasis on nursing's and nurses' virtues rather than on their knowledge and concrete contributions."-from the Introduction In a series of provocative essays, The Complexities of Care rejects the assumption that nursing work is primarily emotional and relational. The contributors-international experts on nursing- all argue that caring discourse in nursing is a dangerous oversimplification that has in fact created many dilemmas within the profession and in the health care system. This book offers a long-overdue exploration of care at a pivotal moment in the history of health care. The ideas presented here will foster a critical debate that will assist nurses to better understand the nature and meaning of the nurse-patient relationship, confront challenges to their work and their profession, and deliver the services patients need now and into the future. Contributors: Sanchia Aranda, University of Melbourne and Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre; Rosie Brown, University of Melbourne; Sean Clarke, University of Pennsylvania and University of Montreal; Suzanne Gordon; Marie Heartfield, University of South Australia; Tom Keighley, Royal College of Nursing; Diana J. Mason, American Journal of Nursing; Lydia L. Moland, Babson College; Sioban Nelson, University of Toronto; Dana Beth Weinberg, Queens College, CUNY

About this title

Review

"This collection of essays . . . shows that nurses in all settings tend to describe their work as caring, emotional, and compassionate, consciously avoiding mention of the knowledge and skill that are equally essential to the job. . . . The consequences . . . include early burnout owing to mistaken expectations and the greater use of unskilled workers, who are seen as equally capable of providing emotional care. . . . Well written and provocative."--Library Journal(15 October 2006)

"While the nursing profession has wrapped itself in care talk, has this hampered a more realistic basis for nurses' self identities and nursing's collective power? This hard-hitting collection faces this question head on. The book is a necessary antidote to more saccharine assessments of twenty-first-century nursing and a tough prescription for change in the health care system."--Susan M. Reverby, Wellesley College, author of Ordered to Care: The Dilemma of American Nursing

About the Author

Sioban Nelson is Dean of the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto. She is the author of Say Little, Do Much and A Genealogy of Care of the Sick. Suzanne Gordon is Visiting Professor at the University of Maryland School of Nursing. She is an award-winning journalist and Assistant Adjunct Professor at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Nursing. She is the author of Nursing against the Odds: How Health Care Cost Cutting, Media Stereotypes, and Medical Hubris Undermine Nurses and Patient Care and the coauthor of From Silence to Voice: What Nurses Know and Must Communicate to the Public, Second Edition, also from Cornell, and Life Support: Three Nurses on the Front Lines.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0801445051
• ISBN 13: 9780801445057
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224
• Editor: Nelson Sioban, Gordon Suzanne