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Towards a Sociology of Nursing offers fresh insights from recent research into the nursing profession. Nurses represent an important part of the professionally trained female workforce and, being a middle-class profession, changes in nursing reflect changes of many working women worldwide. Scholarship addressing these changes, however, often consists of narratives of nurses talking about themselves, which can be enriched by a sociological background that foregrounds hypotheses.
In this book, Ricardo A. Ayala problematises the realities which inform, affect and shape nursing, offering new perspectives on the consequences of those social realities for the nursing profession and society more broadly. He draws on extensive field research with nurses in the workplace, spending time with them, interviewing key actors and reading and analysing documents critically through a distinctive sociological lens.
List of contents
Part I.- Chapter 1: Overview of the Study.- Chapter 2: Nursing as a profession: old tensions, new insights.- Chapter 3: Nursing the status: the construction of work and social class identity.- Chapter 4: Redoing gender in nursing.- Chapter 5: Red and blue: competing for jurisdiction, losing in power.- Part II.- Chapter 6: The time has come: changing patterns of power.- Chapter 7: The organisation, the background, the landscape: navigating the reforms.- Chapter 8: Nurses in the new landscape of interprofessional relations.- Chapter 9: A note on methodology.
About the author
Ricardo A. Ayala works at the Department of Sociology, Ghent University, Belgium.
Summary
Towards a Sociology of Nursing offers fresh insights from recent research into the nursing profession. Nurses represent an important part of the professionally trained female workforce and, being a middle-class profession, changes in nursing reflect changes of many working women worldwide. Scholarship addressing these changes, however, often consists of narratives of nurses talking about themselves, which can be enriched by a sociological background that foregrounds hypotheses.
In this book, Ricardo A. Ayala problematises the realities which inform, affect and shape nursing, offering new perspectives on the consequences of those social realities for the nursing profession and society more broadly. He draws on extensive field research with nurses in the workplace, spending time with them, interviewing key actors and reading and analysing documents critically through a distinctive sociological lens.
Additional text
“The audience is scholars interested in sociological research in nursing, although the author accurately implies the book's usefulness for those teaching nursing. Graduate students in the health professions, in particular and those in leadership roles in healthcare institutions may find that the book expands ways of thinking about sociological issues in the nursing profession. … This book is high quality from the perspective of a dissertation.” (Martha Scheckel, Doody's Book Reviews, November 22, 2019)
Report
"The audience is scholars interested in sociological research in nursing, although the author accurately implies the book's usefulness for those teaching nursing. Graduate students in the health professions, in particular and those in leadership roles in healthcare institutions may find that the book expands ways of thinking about sociological issues in the nursing profession. ... This book is high quality from the perspective of a dissertation." (Martha Scheckel, Doody's Book Reviews, November 22, 2019)
