Social structure and crisis: A study of nursing organization and patient adjustment

The experience of crisis by an individual is conceptualized as a personal rather than an objective event. It is proposed that the social milieu is conditioned by social structure and that it exerts direct and continual influences upon how an event is experienced and handled and how it influences the individual. Reported are the effects of two differing organizations of nursing services, taken as instances of social organization, on the adjustment of patients to the severe event of sickness and hospitalization.