Troubling Institutions”, Berlin, 28./29.5.2021
“It depends from where someone is coming": Negotiations of Social Differences in a Swiss Hospital”
Within the last two decades, social differences within the Swiss health care sector have increased due to the specialisation of training, the differentiation and academisation of nursing, the feminisation of medicine, the entry of men into nursing professions, as well as the arrival of foreign trained nurses and physicians. In addition, a new generation is joining the health sector labour force, and this generation challenges taken-for-granted notions about health professions. Healthcare institutions, on the one hand profit from and depend on the diversity of their personnel. On the other hand, they need to ensure they are functioning well using processes we call homogenisation. In this presentation, we ask how these social differences intersect and how they are negotiated between and among nurses and physicians in the everyday working life within a hospital setting.