This qualitative study investigates patients' awareness of the relational work done by nurses. Relational work, a component of many women's jobs, is the work involved in dealing with, and managing, feelings and emotions. It is said to be invisible because it is unnoticed, undervalued, or taken for granted. Patients expect relational care but few classify it as work. They value it personally but do not see how it contributes to medical or technical work in the hospital. Patients attribute the skill involved in doing this work to personality, link the motivation for doing it to altruism, and overlook the constraints which determine how nurses provide emotional care. This research provides a comparison to studies which examine relational work done by women in other roles and raises questions about how work is defined.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.68121 |
| Date | January 1993 |
| Creators | Mellow, Muriel, 1960- |
| Contributors | Stelling, Joan (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Department of Sociology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001399991, proquestno: AAIMM94373, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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