Professionalisation, Rationalisation and Policy Change

Abstract

In 1983 the New South Wales government announced that all pre-registration nurse education would be transferred to the tertiary education sector by 1985. Prior to this, over three decades of lobbying by national and international nursing organisations on the basis of professionalisation had failed to move successive governments. A change of strategy in 1980 saw nursing bodies argue for the transfer of nurse education on economic grounds and within three years nursing education policy was changed. This paper examines the effects of this policy change on the work experiences of practising nurses. Using the methods of ethnography the disabling contradictions between professionalisation and rationalisation are explored to reveal how the internal politics of nursing is characterised by contestation between dominant and marginalised voices. Dominant groups cast “nursing” and “professionalisation” in universal terms which preserve and expand their own privilege at the expense of the majority of practising nurses who have experienced deskilling.