PhD defence S.C. (Sybren) Kuijper

Below is a brief summary of the dissertation: 

Nurses are essential to healthcare, yet many hospitals are struggling with staff shortages. In this context, the reorganization of nursing work is increasingly framed — politically and discursively — as an urgent global policy priority, sparking a wave of change initiatives in recent years. 
Too often, however, the political nature of change is pushed aside by those working on and studying change in healthcare practice, policy, and research. Across fields, there is a strong tendency to treat change as technical and apolitical processes; detached from the organizational, institutional and political arenas in which envisioned changes are negotiated, contested and ultimately decided. 
This research, in turn, takes a closer look at the political dynamics and controversies behind efforts to reorganize nursing work and what this means for the nursing profession. 
It is based on long-term participatory ethnographic research in Dutch hospitals, conducted within 'RN2Blend' – a nationwide research program supported by the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport with the aim of studying and supporting changes in nursing. It shows how the reform of nursing work and the professionalization of nurses run the risk of becoming stuck in heated and politicized debates about identity, epistemic knowledge and organizational impact. 
The insights will be of interest to nurses, healthcare managers, professional nursing associations, policymakers, and anyone concerned practically or conceptually with power, politics, and organizational change — in nursing and beyond.