Institutional Obstructions to Carework and Professionalism in Migrant Nursing

What is it about?

Over its history, while nursing responsibilities have shifted from primarily hygienic tasks (vocational work) to more medically-centered duties (professional work), the work of care remains at the core of the nursing profession. Nurses judge themselves and each other as professionals based on how well they are able to care for the patients in their charge. A professional nurse’s ability to care centers on the institutional environment in which she works. Using an ethnographic case study of Czech nurses as migrants, this paper explores how talking about their work enables nurses to examine their professional identities in different institutional contexts, that of their native Czech Republic and in foreign workplaces. At its foundation, I explore what happens when the institutional setting in which caring is supposed to take place hinders the production of caring practices.

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Why is it important?

This paper examines the workspaces of nurses, a group that is suffering global shortages. When nurses have a negative professional identity, when they feel that they cannot do the work they need to as nurses, they become dissatisfied with the job and, even, the profession. When the health care institution is the environment that creates dissatisfaction, that is something that can be addressed.

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