Bedside Matters: The Transformation of Canadian Nursing, 1900-1990

Description

Nursing embodies the seemingly timeless characteristics of feminine healing| caring| and nurturing| yet this archetypally female vocation also boasts a distinctive and complex history. “Bedside Matters” traces four generations of Canadian nurses to explore changes in who became nurses| what work they performed| and how they organized to defend their occupational interests. Whether in the apprenticeship method of the early twentieth century or in the present day restructuring of hospital work| the position of nurses within the health-care system has been structured by class| gender| and ethnic and racial relations. Located between the doctors and untrained or subsidiary patient-care attendants| nurses have struggled to define the boundaries of their occupation “vis ? vis” other members of the health-care hierarchy| even as tensions between bedside and administrative nurses created divisions within nursing itself.

Focusing on the daily labours of ‘ordinary nurses’| McPherson argues that the persisting sex-typing of nursing as women’s work has meant that gender consistently complicated nursing’s easy categorization as either professional or proletariat. Combining archival records and oral histories| the author shows how nurses| in their work| activities| and social and sexual attitudes| sought recognition as skilled workers in the health-care system.

“Previously published by Oxford University Press”