EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Re-conceptualising holism in the contemporary nursing mandate: From individual to organisational relationships

Davina Allen

Social Science & Medicine, 2014, vol. 119, issue C, 131-138

Abstract: Over the last forty years, nursing's claim to professional expertise has been expressed in terms of its care-giving function. Informed by a distinctive ‘holistic’ approach, models of nursing identify therapeutic relationships as the cornerstone of practice. While ‘knowing the patient’ has been central to clinicians' occupational identity, research reveals that nurses not only experience significant material constraints in realising these ideals, their contribution to healthcare extends far beyond direct work with patients. Amidst growing concern about healthcare quality, a body of critical commentary has emerged proposing that the contemporary nursing mandate, with its exclusive focus on care-giving, is no longer serving the interests of the profession or the public. Drawing on an ethnographic study of UK hospital nurses' ‘organising work’ and insights from practice-based approaches and actor network theory, this paper lays the foundations for a re-conceptualisation of holism within the nursing mandate centred on organisational rather than therapeutic relationships. Nurses can be understood as obligatory passage points in health systems and through myriad processes of ‘translational mobilisation’ sustain the networks through which care is organised.

Keywords: Nursing; Healthcare organisation; Holism; Professional mandate; Ethnography; Practice theories; Actor network theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953614005620
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:119:y:2014:i:c:p:131-138

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.08.036

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:119:y:2014:i:c:p:131-138