Nursing Power and Social Judgement: An Interpretive Ethnography of a Hospital Ward - Developments in Nursing & Health Care S. (Hardback)

Re-examining the social processes behind the labelling of patients in hospital care, this volume takes an interpretive perspective as the author analyzes the social construction of patient labels identifying strategies for, and the consequences of, giving and receiving "good" and "bad" labels. Martin Johnson shows how the data of participant observation in the tradition of reflexive ethnography can powerfully illuminate the experiences and actions of both patients and their nurses. The study is an analysis of work in this field and seeks to demonstrate the redundancy of trait theories of social judgement and offers a complex and negotiated reality in which patient labels form a part of a rich web of unequal power relations between nurses and their clients.