Doing Occupational Demarcation

Abstract

This article examines how nurse managers attempted to accomplish the formal boundaries of clinical nursing in a large UK district general hospital. The study was undertaken in the context of wider national policy developments which had provided the impetus for role realignment. The practices and rhetorical devices nurse managers employed in doing demarcation are treated herein as examples of “boundary-work.” The management context is an arena which has hitherto been neglected in symbolic interactionist studies of the hospital division of labor and, as a consequence, the understanding of the processes through which occupational jurisdictions are constituted remains partial. This article aims to begin to address this gap in the literature by considering the contribution of these microsociological processes to the practical accomplishment of the hospital division of labor.