Danish hospitals are major sites of healthcare reform, and new public management accountability
and performance management tools have been applied to improve the quality and efficiency of
services. One consequence of this is that nurses? work in hospitals is increasingly standardized
through medical evidence. Using Bourdieu?s theory of practice in combination with an ethnographic
field study, it is analyzed how the nurses of a Danish Integrated Emergency Department respond
to the changing conditions of work. It is illuminated how two opposing approaches to nursing of
humanistically and pluralistically oriented caring, and evidence-based scientifically oriented curing
inform nursing in the department. The curing approach is however trumping the caring approach.
Curing creates new nursing career pathways and is by some nurses embraced with enthusiasm.
For others, the new situation creates tension and distress. It is illustrated how the nurses position
their practice in relation to the changing working conditions taking sides for either curing or
caring, or finding a way to maneuver in between the two. The article argues that the normative
enforcement of the curing approach may carry unintended side effects to the goals of quality and
efficiency enhancements.
Author Biography
Jette Ernst, Department of Language and Communication, University of Southern Denmark
