New-old professional groups in medicine: Formal re-definitions of the nursing profession and the internal qualities of the professionals
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2008-09-12 |
For a long time in Lithuania nurses were just a scattered group of subordinate workers, who were just accomplishers of simple tasks under the control of highly educated physicians. Recently nurses have become an institutionalized group of professionals who share common values and aims as individuals, hold increasing power in bureaucratic nurse-doctor relationships in health care organizations and consolidate their position in terms of increasing social status in the society in general. The main question which we raise in this paper is about the internal qualities of the profession, which undergoes radical changes in Lithuania. That is, we ask: (a) what terminal values (TVs) and instrumental values (IVs) maintain the professionals; (b) how the values vary among nurses from different generations; and (c) how the nurses feel in general. Statistical analysis of representative sample (N=872) data demonstrates, that nurses’ satisfaction with life quality negatively covariates with their age. However, only up to one-third of nurses feel they are valued in the society. Furthermore, both TVs and IVs are rather similar among nurses of different generations. Concretely, the highest ranks are attached to such hedonistic TVs as pleasure, equality and world beauty and such traditionally feminine IVs as obedience, cheerfulness and tenderness. Contrarily, the lowest ranks are assigned for the TVs of family security, tranquility, sense of accomplishment and the IVs of honesty, competence and effectiveness and responsibility. The results are discussed in terms of their dissimilarities from and similarities to general tendencies of the phenomena in Eastern and Western European countries.