Obeständiga arbetsdelningar : En studie om hur kontrollen över arbetsuppgifter förskjuts mellan professioner på sjukhusavdelningar

Sammanfattning: The regional healthcare in Sweden is suffering from a acute shortage of nurses. In order to cope with the situation, the regional healthcare institutions has included other professions to perform the job assigments of the absent nurses. A public debate emerged whether or not nurses were replacable with other professions in regional healtcare instituitons. This theisis believes that more research of nurses field of work could contribute to the discussion. The theisis aims to contribute to the existing research of nurses field of work by studying the division of labour between nurses and physicians and between nurses and auxillary nurses in order to understand how the division of labour between these professions look like and why they are constituted as they are. By conducting seven semi-structured interviews with nurses and taking theoretical inspiration from Andrew Abbotts theory of ”jurisdictional claims” and the three realms where claims can be made, this theisis finds that the reality of the job assigments in the division of labour between the professions are, by using Abbotts own word of choice, ”fuzzy”. The nurses’ descriptions of the divions of labour tells that nurses are losing control of job assignments in a field that they are trained to exicute, care-related work, while gaining control over medicinal assignments that they are relationally under-trained to exicute. Nurses are also giving away control over fully controlled medicinal tasks that they are trained to do to auxillary nurses, while physicians are giving away control over assignments in the same fashion to nurses. This theisis concludes that the divisions of labour displays three variations of how control can be displaced: By organizational structures, by the controlling professions themselves and by the state-required assignments; forced upon nurses as the profession is regulated by The National Board of Health and Welfare.