Original scientific paper
Main Trends and Problems of Professionalization of Vocation: Example of Nursing
Vjeko Santrić
; Faculty of Medicine, Zagreb
Abstract
The subject of the study is of two kinds. The first kind deals with the sociological determination of vocation and professionalization and the second kind with nursing as a semi-profession or an emerging profession. After having presented basic criteria of professionalization of vocation, different definitions of nursing are given and historical stages of professionalization are discussed as well as ways in which nursing fought for its professional autonomy, monopoly and legalization of professional authority. The paper also gives the theoretical and ethical basis of nursing and the review of the sudden expansion of nursing and the nursing education in the last century.
The problems of further emancipation of nursing are analyzed on the macro, mezzo and micro level, and they have shown that autonomous nursing which possesses a certain professional authority exists only where the process of treatment has not yet began (health education, prevention) or where it is already finished (rehabilitation, help when dying). The other paradox of professionalization of nursing is related to the fact that the satisfaction with work is the greater the farther are nurses from physicians and patients, and this satisfaction is greater because of the higher social status such jobs have.
Despite the fact that nursing has gone through all phases of professionalization, it cannot be considered as a profession because it is proportionally poorly paid and has a low social status. On the basis of the above mentioned it can be concluded that the criteria of income and social status are decisive in differing a profession from a semi-profession, while all the other »academic« criteria, which are taken into account when defining a profession, are less important.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
155324
URI
Publication date:
30.6.1990.
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