La dramatic increase in the number of people being treated in hospital. But this increased treatment has only been achieved by discharging patients much more quickly. Therefore nurses both in hospital and in community services are having to deal with patients who are usually more ill than in the past. The pace of the work is quickened for nursing staff and the level of stress is increased.
Finally the role of the nurse is now expanding.
Whilst such steps benefit both nurses and patients they clearly increase the level of stress under which nurses work. The nurse takes on extremely skilled tasks, acts as a counsellor, defends the rights of patients and has a continually expanding role in the teaching of nurses (and often of medical staff, though they would perhaps be reluctant to admit this.
Nursing itself developed with an ex. ceptionally strong reactionary regime, basing itself on the twin traditions of religion and the military, fostering the notions of 'vocation' in which the nurse was expected to devote her entire life to the care of the sick (on marriage women were no longer allowed to continue nursing)
Today much of that ideology is unde attack from within nursing. Women are questioning why male nurses achieve promotion at a much faster rate than women. There is an increased awarenes of the importance of assertiveness and training courses have been established. Traditional attitudes of medical staff to women, whether as nurses or as patients are being questioned.
In short the growth of the women's movement is having a marked impact inside nursing, particularly amongst student nurses who have often been at the forefront of the current wave of protests • inside the NHS.
Socialist Action March 1988