The nursing profession and its relationship with hospital managers

This paper describes the relationship between the professional nursing and managerial imperatives in health care and explains some of the ways the managerial culture affects the working environment of professional nurses. It goes on to highlight some of the professional developments of the last 17 years and describes how these could augment the difference in imperatives. Finally it suggests ways in which the nursing profession might develop to maintain its unique contribution to health care, whilst embracing the managerial domain. This is necessary to ensure that professional nursing is nurtured and not overwhelmed by workloads and empirical assessments of nursing outputs.