Nursing

Abstract

Unlike medicine, nursing exercises little control over the demand for health care. Its political utility to a state striving to deal with the ever-rising curve of citizen expectations is therefore minimal and, in this respect, its bargaining position in the grand politics of welfare is inherently weak. Nursing will never rival medicine and have its own concordat with the state (see Chapter 5). Nevertheless, against this it can be argued that within the NHS nursing is not without power because it is the largest single occupation, it has some measure of professional autonomy, it is historically deeply embedded in Health Service structures and in times of crisis it is able to call upon substantial public sympathy.