Abstract
Despite the academisation process the profession goes through in many western countries for decades, the level of autonomy of the nursing profession is still relatively low; nurses remain broadly under the domination of doctors and hospitals. The opening in 2009 at the University of Lausanne of a master’s degree marked a new stage in the history of the profession in Switzerland. With new resources, the emergence of this nurses’ profile disrupting professional relationships, both with respect to doctors as well as within the profession. After having presented the stakes of going through an academic training based on scientific knowledge, the article shows the attempt of redefinition of the practical and symbolic roles to which it gives rise as well as some of the effects of this diploma and its resources are having on the professional relationships.
Highlights
The nursing profession has historically been thought of as one which is subordinate in most working relationships1. Hughes (2008) noted that at the end of World War Two their role consisted of “of all the things which have to be done in the hospital and which are not done by other kinds of people” (p. 312)
Following on from this, this paper focuses on the nurses whom I have termed the “scientific elites” because of where they are practicing—usually as clinical nurse specialists in university hospitals or as teachers in universities of applied sciences (UAS)—and the symbolic prestige (Bourdieu, 1984) associated with their new academic resources4
The purpose of this article is to contribute to a sociological analysis of the evolution of the nursing profession in Switzerland, and wider, to a reflection on the effects of its academisation
Summary
The nursing profession has historically been thought of as one which is subordinate in most working relationships1. Hughes (2008) noted that at the end of World War Two their role consisted of “of all the things which have to be done in the hospital and which are not done by other kinds of people” (p. 312). Looking at the hierarchical component of this division of labour, Freidson (1970) showed that the medical profession held a legal and symbolic monopoly on the assessment of patients’ ailments; nurses had neither power nor autonomy over any decisions concerning patient care. These views may seem somewhat dated, later works came to similar conclusions. More recent research came to the same overall outcomes showing that social relations between doctors and nurses remain marked by different kinds of domination—notably legal, symbolic, and gender domination (Picot, 2005; Longchamp, Toffel, Bühlmann, & Tawfik, 2020)
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